Busan: President Donald Trump described his face-to-face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping Thursday as a roaring success, saying he would cut tariffs on China, while Beijing had agreed to allow the export of rare earth elements and start buying American soybeans.
The president told reporters aboard Air Force One that the US would lower tariffs implemented earlier this year as punishment on China for its selling of chemicals used to make fentanyl from 20 per cent to 10 per cent. That brings the total combined tariff rate on China down from 57 per cent to 47 per cent.
“I guess on the scale from 0 to 10, with ten being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12,” Trump said. “I think it was a 12.”
Trump said that he would go to China in April and Xi would come to the US “some time after that.” The president said they also discussed the export of more advanced computer chips to China, saying that Nvidia would be in talks with Chinese officials.
Trump said he could sign a trade deal with China “pretty soon.”
“We do not have too many major stumbling blocks,” Trump said.
Sources of tension remain
Despite Trump’s optimism after a 100-minute meeting with Xi in South Korea, there continues to be the potential for major tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Both nations are seeking dominant places in manufacturing, developing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and shaping world affairs like Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs since returning to the White House for a second term, combined with China’s retaliatory limits on exports of rare earth elements, gave the meeting newfound urgency. There is a mutual recognition that neither side wants to risk blowing up the world economy in ways that could jeopardise their own country’s fortunes.
When the two were seated at the start of the meeting, Xi read prepared remarks that stressed a willingness to work together despite differences.
“Given our different national conditions, we do not always see eye to eye with each other,” he said through a translator. “It is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then.”
There was a slight difference in translation as China’s Xinhua News Agency reported Xi as telling Trump that having some differences is inevitable.
China did not provide immediate comment on the meeting or any outcomes.
Finding ways to lower the temperature
The leaders met in Busan, South Korea, a port city about 76 kilometres (47 miles) south of Gyeongju, the main venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
In the days leading up to the meeting, US officials signalled that Trump did not intend to make good on a recent threat to impose an additional 100 per cent import tax on Chinese goods, and China showed signs it was willing to relax its export controls on rare earths and also buy soybeans from America.
Officials from both countries met earlier this week in Kuala Lumpur to lay the groundwork for their leaders. Afterwards, China’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang said they had reached a “preliminary consensus,” a statement affirmed by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said there was “ a very successful framework.”
Shortly before the meeting Thursday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the meeting would be the “G2,” a recognition of America and China’s status as the world’s biggest economies. The Group of Seven and the Group of 20 are other forums of industrialised nations.
But while those summits often happen at luxury spaces, this meeting took place in humbler surroundings: Trump and Xi met in a small grey building with a blue roof on a military base adjacent to Busan’s international airport.
The anticipated detente has given investors and businesses caught between the two nations a sense of relief. The US stock market has climbed on the hopes of a trade framework coming out of the meeting.
Pressure points remain for both the US and China
Trump has outward confidence that the grounds for a deal are in place, but previous negotiations with China this year in Geneva, Switzerland and London had a start-stop quality to them. The initial promise of progress has repeatedly given way to both countries seeking a better position against the other.
“The proposed deal on the table fits the pattern we’ve seen all year: short-term stabilisation dressed up as strategic progress,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies. “Both sides are managing volatility, calibrating just enough cooperation to avert crisis while the deeper rivalry endures.”
The US and China have each shown they believe they have levers to pressure the other, and the past year has demonstrated that tentative steps forward can be short-lived.
For Trump, that pressure comes from tariffs.
China had faced new tariffs this year totalling 30 per cent, of which 20 per cent were tied to its role in fentanyl production. But the tariff rates have been volatile. In April, he announced plans to jack the rate on Chinese goods to 145 per cent, only to abandon those plans as markets recoiled.
Then, on Oct. 10, Trump threatened a 100 per cent import tax because of China’s rare earth restrictions. That figure, including past tariffs, would now be 47 per cent “effective immediately,” Trump told reporters Thursday.
Xi has his own chokehold on the world economy because China is the top producer and processor of the rare earth minerals needed to make fighter jets, robots, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.
China had tightened export restrictions Oct. 9, repeating a cycle in which each nation jockeys for an edge only to back down after more trade talks.
What might also matter is what happens directly after their talks. Trump plans to return to Washington, while Xi plans to stay on in South Korea to meet with regional leaders during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which officially begins Friday.
“Xi sees an opportunity to position China as a reliable partner and bolster bilateral and multilateral relations with countries frustrated by the US administration’s tariff policy,” said Jay Truesdale, a former State Department official who is CEO of TD International, a risk and intelligence advisory firm.
AP
