China Hopes to Reach Early Tariff Reduction Deal With US

BEIJING – China and the United States are aiming to finalize a deal soon to reduce import tariffs, a Chinese government spokesperson said Thursday, raising the possibility of a breakthrough when the two nations’ leaders meet later this month.

Trade officials from both sides are working to put reciprocal tariff cuts on $30 billion worth of goods into effect “at an early date,” Commerce Ministry spokesperson Huang Ling told reporters during a weekly briefing.

Huang offered no further details. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to meet in Washington on Sept. 24, marking their third in-person meeting over the past year. Officials in both capitals have framed the leaders’ talks as an effort to steady U.S.-China relations at a time of intensifying competition between the world’s two largest economies.

“Leaders’ diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China-U.S. relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Thursday.

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At their previous meeting in Beijing in May, Trump and Xi agreed to create a U.S.-China Board of Trade to oversee commercial ties, alongside a separate Board of Investment. Those arrangements followed a truce in a fierce tariff dispute, during which Trump sharply raised duties on Chinese imports and Beijing retaliated with its own steep measures.

The talks on reciprocal tariff reductions are a central part of the negotiations on creating the Board of Trade. The goal is to identify and reduce tariffs on equivalent amounts of “non-sensitive” goods on each side.

“Trade will be front and center at the summit,” Barclays Bank said in a research note this week on the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting, noting that the truce the two countries reached on tariffs expires on Nov. 10. But it cautioned that the scope for a broad trade deal is limited, and that targeted tariff reductions are more likely.