USA and China discuss 30 billion dollar reciprocal tariff cuts ahead of Trump-Xi summit
Farm purchases are Beijing's price for implementing the deal, Europe's billion-dollar-a-day deficit with China has no seat at the table
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China and the United States have discussed reciprocal tariff cuts covering roughly 30 billion dollars of goods from each side, ahead of an expected meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the Apec summit in Shenzhen on Thursday. Neither side announced a final agreement after the first meeting of the bilateral Trade Council on Friday, held by video conference, but China's Commerce Ministry described the exchanges as candid, in-depth and constructive.
The framework follows the September Trump-Xi meeting in Washington, where both countries agreed to work toward reciprocal tariff reductions on selected products. A White House document published in September outlined a mechanism under which each side would identify goods worth around 30 billion dollars for reduced tariff treatment, a combined package of some 60 billion. About 17 billion of that consists of US agricultural products China imported in 2024 — and Beijing has made clear that Washington implementing the cuts is the condition for expanding farm purchases.
The leverage is real. A Reuters analysis of customs data found that Chinese purchases of US agricultural goods other than soybeans were on track for a seven-year low this year, despite a Chinese commitment to buy 17 billion dollars of American farm products annually through 2028. The tariffs, in other words, turned out to be bargaining chips rather than industrial policy — the market access is being traded for soybeans and corn.
Absent from the table is Europe. The EU's trade deficit with China now runs above 1.1 billion dollars per day, and when Washington and Beijing sit down to carve out exceptions for each other's exporters, no such negotiation is available to Brussels. The bilateral Trade Council is expected to continue meeting to address outstanding trade concerns — a mechanism two countries built for themselves, at a pace the rest of the world watches from the outside.