Laura Bicker,China correspondent ,
Anthony Zurcher,North America correspondent and
Flora Drury
US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have met for the first time in six years – raising hopes for a de-escalation of tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
Trump described the talks, held in South Korea, as “amazing”, while Beijing said they had reached a consensus to resolve “major trade issues”.
Relations have been tense since Trump began imposing new tariffs on China, prompting retaliation from Beijing. The two agreed to a truce in May, but tensions remained high.
Thursday’s talks did not lead to a formal agreement but the announcements suggest they are closer to a deal – the details of which have long been subject to behind-the-scenes negotiations.
Trade deals normally take years to negotiate. Countries around the world have been thrown into resolving differences with Trump within a matter of months, after he imposed sweeping tariffs – or import taxes – on some of his top trade partners.
Some of those key trading partners are in Asia, where Trump has spent the last several days.
Tariff ‘truce’ and movement on rare earths
China has agreed to suspend export control measures it had placed on rare earths, crucial for the production of everything from smartphones to fighter jets. This has been seen as a key win for Trump from his meeting with Xi.
A jubilant Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he had also got China to start immediately buying a “tremendous amounts of soybeans and other farm products”. Retaliatory tariffs on American soybeans by Beijing had effectively halted imports from the US, harming US farmers – who constitute a key voting block for Trump.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later told Fox Business that China had agreed to buy 12 million metric tonnes of soybeans this season, and would follow that up with a minimum of 25 million tonnes per year for the next three years.
In the immediate aftermath of the meeting, the US also said it would drop part of the tariffs it has levied on Beijing over the flow of ingredients used in making fentanyl to the US. Trump has imposed severe tariffs on China, as well as Canada and Mexico, for their perceived failure to clamp down on the flow of that drug.
The president of the US-China Business Council welcomed the news on tariffs and rare earths, describing these as the most significant outcome of the talks.
Sean Stein told the BBC: “You could say that this is a truce, that we are now locked in place on tariffs and we don’t have to worry every 90 days where other it’s going to roll over”.
Speaking to Business Today from Beijing, Mr Stein said this “gives business plenty of time to work on the Chinese and the US administration to make sure that they’re focused on some of the long-standing issues that have troubled the trade relationship between the two countries.”
However, it seems other tariffs, or taxes on imported goods, will remain in place, meaning that goods arriving in the US from China are still being taxed at a rate of over 40% for US importers.
More positively for Beijing, it will now be able to speak to Jensen Huang, the head of US tech firm Nvidia – according to Trump. Nvidia is at the heart of the two countries’ fight over AI chips: China wants high-end chips but the US wants to limit China’s access, citing national security.
Beijing has also extended an invitation to Trump to visit China in April – yet another sign of thawing relations.
There was, however, no mention of a breakthrough on TikTok. The US has sought to take the video-sharing app’s US operations away from Chinese parent company ByteDance for national security reasons. Beijing said afterwards it would continue to work to resolve the issues.
China more measured, talking of ‘good start’
The meeting also showed the gulf between the two leaders’ approaches.
Xi was self-contained, and said only what he had prepared. He entered the meeting knowing he had a strong hand. China had learned from Trump’s first term, leveraging its chokehold on rare earths, and diversifying its trade partners so it is less reliant on the US.
Afterwards, he was far more measured in his language than Trump. The two sides would be working on delivering outcomes that will serve as a “reassuring pill” for both countries’ economies, he said.
Trump was – as always – more ad-lib. But the US president was also noticeably more tense than he had been for the rest of his whirlwind trip to South East Asia – a reflection of the high stakes in Thursday’s meeting.
The glamour and pageantry on show since he arrived at his first stop in Malaysia just five days ago was also absent.
Gone were the gold-laden palaces of the sort he was welcomed to in Japan on Tuesday. Instead, a building at an airport, lying behind barbed wire and security checkpoints.
The military bands which welcomed Trump to South Korea on Wednesday were nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the only sign something important was going on inside was the heavy police and media presence.
But despite the quieter public face, what was happening inside was arguably the most significant hour and 20 minutes of the trip.
Henry Wang, a former adviser to China’s State Council, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Trump and Xi’s talks “went very well”.
It may not have been a trade deal, but a “framework and structure has been laid”, he added – calling it “a good start”.
Additional reporting by Jonathan Josephs
