China and the US have cautiously agreed to pause any new tariffs and export curbs, easing weeks of trade tensions ahead of a planned meeting between President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, officials from both countries confirmed on Sunday.
Talks held over the weekend in Malaysia between Vice Premier He Lifeng, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer resulted in what China described as a “basic consensus” on key trade concerns, multiple media outlets are reporting.
The agreement is expected to be formalised when Trump and Xi meet on Thursday on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Gyeongju, South Korea.
According to Bessent, the new framework would cancel Trump’s threatened 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports and delay China’s new rare earth minerals licensing regime by at least a year. It would also see Beijing resume purchases of US soybeans after months of suspension and extend the two countries’ current tariff truce beyond its 10 November deadline.
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“I would expect that the threat of the 100 percent has gone away, as has the threat of the immediate imposition of the Chinese initiating a worldwide export control regime,” Bessent told reporters.
From the Chinese side, trade negotiator Li Chenggang said the weekend’s “very intense” talks on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Kuala Lumpur had been “constructive exchanges in exploring solutions.”
Other subjects discussed in Malaysia included trade expansion, the US fentanyl crisis, US port entrance fees and the transfer of TikTok to US ownership.
Regarding the latter, Bessent said Xi and Trump should be able to “consummate the transaction” in South Korea. TikTok has faced the threat of a ban in the US unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divested ownership due to what Washington purports to be national security concerns.
