US, China agree to pause tariff war for 90 days, will slash reciprocal duties by 115 percent
The United States and China on Monday agreed to roll back tariffs on each other’s goods for a 90-day period initially in a bid to defuse the rising trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The announcement was made after marathon negotiations between Washington, DC, and Beijing in Switzerland's Geneva over the weekend, the first high-level talks since US President Donald Trump imposed steep tariffs on Chinese imports earlier this year.
Under the agreement, the US will reduce tariffs on Chinese goods from 145 percent to 30 percent, while China will slash its tariffs on American imports from 125 percent to 10 percent, a joint statement said.
The two sides also agreed to establish "a mechanism to continue discussions about economic and trade relations", led by Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
"We concluded that we have a shared interest," Bessent said at a press conference in Geneva, as reported by the New York Times. "The consensus from both delegations is that neither side wanted a decoupling."
The tariff cuts mark a step back from the escalating trade tensions between the two countries that stoked fears of a global recession.
In addition to the tariff discussions, US officials also raised concerns about the flow of chemical ingredients used to manufacture fentanyl, a highly addictive opioid, from China.
"The Chinese understood the magnitude of the fentanyl crisis in the United States," Bessent said.
A 20 percent punitive tariff on Chinese exports, imposed earlier by Trump in response to what he called Beijing’s inaction on fentanyl trafficking, remains in force.
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