President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded their long-awaited sit-down on Thursday with many questions about the state of trade left unanswered—at least for the public.
In a meeting that lasted an hour and forty minutes—longer than expected—the heads of state brought ample backup. On the American side, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Ambassador to China David Perdue and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles flanked the president.
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Xi was joined by his own chief of staff, Cai Qi, along with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, Vice Premier He Lifeng, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission Zheng Shanjie, according to the BBC.
In their first in-person meeting since 2019 at a South Korean Air Base in Busan, the two leaders agreed to “almost everything,” Trump told reporters, adding that the talk was “amazing.”
The docket for discussion included the resumption of China’s purchase of American soybeans (China has already resumed buying), fentanyl (Xi said he would “work very hard to stop the flow,” Trump said) and Ukraine, which the two leaders spoke about at length, according to Al Jazeera. The topic of Taiwan was not broached.
“We focused on export controls of China on rare earth, and they’re going to keep those flowing, which is quite important,” Trump added. Beijing has delayed its export controls by one year, at which point the topic will be renegotiated, multiple sources report.
The most immediately notable point from the meeting was that the U.S. president agreed to reduce the country’s punitive fentanyl tariffs from 20 percent to 10 percent thanks to Xi’s commitment to tackle the smuggling of the narcotic and its chemical precursors. That brings China’s current tariff burden down from about 57 percent to around 47 percent.
Neither side offered details about whether a formal trade truce had been brokered. At one point after the meeting adjourned, Trump told reporters that he believes a deal will be formalized “pretty soon.”
Trump said he plans to visit China in April and Xi will visit the U.S. sometime soon after.
“We’ve come to conclusions on many very important points, and we’ll be handing that to you in a little while,” he said.
“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,” Xi told Trump at the start of the meeting, according to CNN. “You and I at the helm of China-US relations should stay the right course.”
“I always believe that China’s development goes hand in hand with your vision to make America great again,” he said.
