China Signals Hope for Early US Tariff Cuts Ahead of Xi-Trump Summit

China and the United States are aiming to conclude an agreement on reducing import duties in the near term, a Chinese government spokesperson said on Thursday, heightening anticipation that an announcement could emerge when the two countries' leaders meet in a fortnight.

Commerce Ministry spokesperson Huang Ling told a weekly briefing that negotiators are working to put reciprocal tariff cuts on $30 billion worth of goods into effect "at an early date." She offered no further details.

President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to hold talks in Washington on Sept. 24 — their third in-person meeting in the past year. Both governments present such leader-level engagement as a means of steadying ties between the world's two largest economies amid competing interests.

"Leaders' diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China-U.S. relations," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Thursday.

At their previous meeting in May in Beijing, Trump and Xi agreed to set up a U.S.-China Board of Trade to oversee trade between the two countries, alongside a parallel Board of Investment. Those understandings followed a truce in a sharp tariff war, during which Trump raised duties on Chinese imports to very high levels and China retaliated in kind.

Negotiations on reciprocal tariff reductions form a central element of the effort to create the Board of Trade. The objective is to identify and lower tariffs on matching quantities of "non-sensitive" goods on both sides.

Barclays Bank said in a research note this week that trade would be the dominant issue at the summit, pointing out that the tariff truce between the two countries is due to lapse on Nov. 10. The bank, however, cautioned that the room for a comprehensive trade agreement is narrow and that focused tariff cuts are the more probable outcome.