US and China Extend Trade Truce by Two Months Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit

The United States and China have agreed to extend their trade truce by two months, pushing its expiry from November 10 to January 10, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday.

The extension, announced in a Fox News interview, followed a roughly 90-minute meeting between Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at the World Bank headquarters in Washington. It was their second encounter in four days, held to prepare for a summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.

Bessent said the additional time would let both sides explore a more expansive agreement rather than a set of smaller arrangements. "We met today to see if we could do a bigger deal as opposed to just a series of smaller things," he said, adding that the two-month extension of the truce agreed in Busan, South Korea, in May would give the two sides more room to assess what is possible on the economic front.

He told reporters that Beijing had raised the prospect of a broader US-China trade deal during 12 hours of talks on Sunday, though he did not detail its potential scope. Asked whether a deal could be reached by January 10, Bessent said it was not yet clear. Washington, he added, is pressing China to be more forthcoming in meeting its commitments under the existing arrangement.

According to Bessent, Beijing is meeting its requirement to purchase 25 million tons of soybeans but is lagging on a pledge to buy $17 billion in other agricultural goods. US officials also said last week that deliveries of rare earths from China were behind schedule.

Bessent said Thursday's summit — the second of as many as four Trump-Xi meetings this year — could yield announcements on efforts to remove tariffs from $30 billion in non-critical goods, as well as on financial services and agricultural purchases. He described the administration's approach as open to either continuing the Busan arrangement or pursuing a larger deal. In a post on X, he called the discussions substantive and said the Treasury was focused on securing commitments that protect American workers, farmers and businesses while advancing US economic and national security interests.

Bessent, He and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met in New York on Sunday to lay the groundwork for possible trade and artificial intelligence agreements. Bessent described those talks as successful and said both sides had agreed to establish a communications hotline for notifying each other about AI safety incidents. China's response to the hotline proposal was unclear, with state media acknowledging only that AI was discussed.

Analysts see low expectations for AI cooperation, citing a lack of mutual trust on the technology and little apparent interest on either side in slowing development. Trump has said he will not stifle AI growth and intends to maintain the US lead over China in what he calls "super intelligence."

The Busan detente sharply lowered bilateral tariff rates that had climbed into triple digits after tit-for-tat retaliation over Trump's tariff increases last year. China had also agreed to restore the flow of rare earth magnets and other critical minerals that it had severely restricted.