Both China and the United States have said they have made progress at trade talks between the two countries in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the discussions as \u201cproductive and constructive,\u201d while China\u2019s Vice Premier He Lifeng said the talks were \u201cin-depth\u201d and \u201ccandid\u201d.<\/p>\n
The White House called it a \u201ctrade deal\u201d but gave no further details. A joint statement with full details is expected on Monday.<\/p>\n
The pair were engaged in secretive closed-door discussions all weekend, in the first meeting since US President Donald Trump levied steep tariffs against China on its goods entering America in January.<\/p>\n
The talks were the first face-to-face meetings between the two countries since President Trump imposed a 145% tariff on Chinese imports, with Beijing responding with a 125% levy on some US goods.<\/p>\n
The huge tariffs caused turmoil in the financial markets and sparked fears of a global recession.<\/p>\n
Following the conclusion of the two-day talks in Geneva, US trade representative ambassador Jamieson Greer said \u201cthe deal we struck with our Chinese partners\u201d would help reduce the US\u2019s $1.2tn (\u00a3901bn) trade deficit.<\/p>\n
Bessent said the US and China had made \u201csubstantial progress\u201d on de-escalating the trade war, while Vice Premier He said the talks were \u201cof great significance to the two countries but also have an important impact on the stability and development of the global economy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Vice Premier He said the two sides had reached a series of major consensuses, and had also agreed to establish an economic and trade consultation mechanism.<\/p>\n
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, inspector general of the World Trade Organization, called the talks \u201ca significant step forward\u201d and urged both countries to \u201cbuild on this momentum\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stocks in mainland China and Hong Kong rose on Monday, while US stock markets are also expected to open higher when trading starts later. The Chinese currency, the yuan, strengthened against the US dollar.<\/p>\n
Frank Lavin, former undersecretary for international trade at the US Department of Commerce, told the BBC\u2019s Business Today programme he expected the two countries to cut tariffs although they would remain \u201cway above historical norms\u201d.<\/p>\n
Andrew Wilson, the deputy secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce, said the current tariff levels needed to be reduced substantially.<\/p>\n
While he said the comments from the weekend were \u201cvery positive\u201d, if tariffs remained above 20% that would \u201cstill be severely disruptive to international trade flows\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we need to be setting 30% as a benchmark, ideally going down towards 20%.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation, said the so-called reciprocal tariffs \u201ccould be addressed, but probably not\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think mostly what I expect is an agreement to keep talking,\u201d she said on the BBC\u2019s Newsday programme.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, following the first day of talks Trump had praised the \u201ctotal reset\u201d on the relationship between the two countries.<\/p>\n
In a social media post, the US president described the talks as being \u201cvery good\u201d and said change had been \u201cnegotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to see, for the good of both China and the U.S., an opening up of China to American business. GREAT PROGRESS MADE!!!\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n
On Friday, before the talks began, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Washington would not lower tariffs unilaterally, and China would need to make its own concessions.<\/p>\n
Both sides issued various other warnings ahead of the meeting, with Beijing saying the US must ease tariffs while Bessent stressed that the focus was on \u201cde-escalation\u201d and this was not a \u201cbig trade deal\u201d.<\/p>\n
Chinese state media reported that Beijing had decided to engage with the US after fully considering global expectations, the country\u2019s interests and appeals from American businesses.<\/p>\n
Last month, the BBC found that Chinese exporters were struggling with the US\u2019s tariffs \u2013 one company, Sorbo Technology, reported that half of its products were normally sold to the US and were now sat in boxes in a warehouse in China.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the US economy shrank in the first three months of the year \u2013 contracting at an annual rate of 0.3% \u2013 as firms raced to get goods into the country.<\/p>\n
The trade war between China and the US intensified last month after President Trump announced a universal baseline tariff on all imports to the United States, on what he called \u201cLiberation Day\u201d.<\/p>\n
Around 60 trading partners, which the White House described as the \u201cworst offenders\u201d, were subjected to higher rates than others. The list included China and the European Union.<\/p>\n
Trump said this was payback for years worth of unfair trade policies for the US.<\/p>\n
He also separately announced a 25% import tax on all steel and aluminium coming into the US, and a further 25% tariff on all cars and car parts.<\/p>\n
It was announced last week that the US and UK had agreed a deal, in which the 25% tariff will be cut to 10% for a maximum of 100,000 UK cars \u2013 matching the number of cars the UK exported last year.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Both China and the United States have said they have made progress at trade talks between the two countries in Switzerland. The US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the discussions as \u201cproductive and constructive,\u201d while China\u2019s Vice Premier He Lifeng said the talks were \u201cin-depth\u201d and \u201ccandid\u201d. The White House called it a \u201ctrade deal\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}