WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said he had struck a deal to reduce tariffs on China on Thursday in exchange for Beijing resuming U.S. soybean purchases, keeping rare earths exports flowing, and cracking down on the illicit trade of fentanyl.
His remarks after face-to-face talks with China’s leader Xi Jinping in the South Korean city of Busan, their first since 2019, marked the finale of Trump’s whirlwind Asia trip on which he also touted trade breakthroughs with South Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asian nations.
The meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, lasted nearly two hours. Trump shook hands and escorted Xi to his car before the U.S. president was given a red-carpet send-off at the airport. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said the meeting with Xi yielded an extendable one-year deal on the supply of crucial rare earths.
‘All the Rare Earths Has Been Settled’
“All the rare earths has been settled, and that’s for the world,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that the deal was for a year and would be re-negotiated annually.
He also described his meeting with Xi as a “great success” and said he would head to China in April for new talks.
“I’ll be going to China in April and he’ll be coming here sometime after that, whether it’s in Florida, Palm Beach or Washington, DC,” Trump said.
“A lot of things we brought to finalisation” at Thursday’s talks in Busan, South Korea, added Trump, praising Xi as a “tremendous leader of a very powerful country.”
Markets Rally on Trade Optimism
Chinese stocks climbed to a decade high and the yuan currency to a near one-year peak against the dollar as investors hoped for an easing of trade tensions that have upended supply chains and rocked global business confidence.
World stock markets from Wall Street to Tokyo have hit record highs in recent days.
Trump repeatedly talked up the prospect of reaching agreement with Xi since U.S. negotiators on Sunday said they had agreed on a framework with China that will avoid 100 percent U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and achieve a deferral of China’s export curbs on rare earths, a sector it dominates.
But with both countries increasingly willing to play hardball over economic and geopolitical competition, many questions remain about how long any trade détente may last.
Earlier, both leaders exchanged warm remarks as their first face-to-face in six years got underway at an airbase in the coastal city of Busan, near the venue of an international summit.
Trump praised Xi as the “great leader of a great country” and said he thought the two “were going to have a fantastic relationship for a long period of time,” while the Chinese leader called it a “great pleasure” to see Trump again.
“We do not always see eye to eye with each other, and it is normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then … you and I at the helm of China-US relations should stay the right course,” Xi said, adding the two nations could “prosper together.”
Yet, moments before landing in Busan, Trump appeared to raise the stakes of the talks — announcing an end to a three-decade moratorium on US nuclear testing.
Trump said the US “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” naming Russia as second and China “a distant third, but will be even within 5 years.”
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately,” he wrote.
