President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that China will make it easier for American industry to obtain much-needed needed magnets and rare earth minerals, clearing the way for talks to continue between the world’s two biggest economies. In return, Trump said, the U.S. will stop efforts to revoke the visas of Chinese nationals on U.S. college campuses.
Trump’s comment on social media came after two days of high-level U.S.-China trade talks in London.
Details remain scarce. Trump didn’t fully spell out what concessions the U.S. made. Beijing has not confirmed what the negotiators agreed to, and Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump himself have yet to sign off on it.
What Trump described as a “deal’’ is actually less than that: It’s a “framework’’ meant to set the stage for more substantive talks.
And Trump’s own comments created confusion about what was happening to his taxes – tariffs — on Chinese imports, generating uncertainty about more than $660 billion in annual trade between the two countries.
On social media, Trump declared: “WE ARE GETTING A TOTAL OF 55% TARIFFS, CHINA IS GETTING 10%. RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT!” But a White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the terms publicly and insisted on anonymity to describe them, said the 55% was not an increase on the previous 30% tariff on China because Trump was including pre-existing tariffs, including some left over from his first term.
“We have no idea what the rules are,″ said Rick Woldenberg, CEO of the educational toy company Learning Resources, who is part of a lawsuit challenging Trump’s authority to impose the tariffs.
In a follow-up social media post, Trump said he and Xi “are going to work closely together to open up China to American Trade. This would be a great WIN for both countries!!!”
The framework emerged late Tuesday in London after intense talks involving U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer. Leading the Chinese delegation was Vice Premier He Lifeng.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has deployed tariffs aggressively, seeing them as a way to raise money for the federal government, protect American industries, lure factories back to the United States and pressure other countries into bending to his will.
He has imposed baseline 10% tariffs on imports from almost every country on earth after having introduced and then suspended for 90 days bigger tariffs on countries based on the size of U.S. trade deficits last year.
To American trading partners and to businesses calculating their import tax bills, the president’s mercurial approach to trade policy can be baffling. For example, he recently doubled his steel and aluminum tariffs to 50%, likely increasing costs for U.S. manufacturers and construction companies that rely on the metals as raw materials.
