The United States and China have agreed to scale back their respective tariffs in a 90-day truce that will allow time for further talks, the countries announced in Geneva on Monday.
America’s 145% tariff on Chinese goods will drop to 30%, while China’s tariff on American-made products will fall from 125% to 10%, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
“We concluded that we have a shared interest,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at a press conference. “The consensus from both delegations this weekend is that neither side wanted a decoupling and what had occurred with these very high tariffs … was an embargo, the equivalent of an embargo. And neither side wants that. We do want trade.”
The update came a day after top officials for both countries announced a trade deal had been met in Switzerland. “It’s important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as maybe thought. That being said, there was a lot of groundwork that went into these two days,” Greer said on Sunday.
“Just remember why we’re here in the first place — the United States has a massive $1.2 trillion trade deficit, so the president declared a national emergency and imposed tariffs, and we’re confident that the deal we struck with our Chinese partners will help us to work toward resolving that national emergency,” he added.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump himself teased a potential economic cease-fire with China on Friday, writing on Truth Social, “80% tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.”
This all came over a month after Trump first announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2, with China eventually retaliating. As things stand, China still said it intends on “moderately” reducing the number of American films it plays going forward.
