Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – The United States and China have hailed the outcome of trade talks in Malaysia, raising expectations that Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will seal a deal to de-escalate their trade war at their first meeting since 2019.
US and Chinese officials on Sunday said the sides had made significant progress towards a deal as they wrapped a weekend of negotiations on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.
Trump and Xi are set to meet on Thursday on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, marking their first face-to-face talks since the US president returned to the White House and embarked on a radical shake-up of global trade.
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that the sides had come up with a “framework” for Trump and Xi to discuss in South Korea.
Bessent said in a subsequent interview with NBC News that he expected the sides to reach a deal that would defer China’s threatened export controls on rare earths and avoid a 100 percent tariff that Trump has threatened to impose on Chinese goods.
Bessent also said in an interview with ABC News that Beijing had agreed to make “substantial” purchases of US agricultural products, which the treasury secretary said would make US soya bean farmers “feel very good”.
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, Beijing’s top trade negotiator, said the sides had reached “a basic consensus” on “arrangements to address each side’s concerns”.
He said they agreed to “finalise specific details” and “proceed with domestic approval processes”, according to a readout from China’s Ministry of Commerce.
After attending the ASEAN summit, Trump on Monday departed for Japan, where he will meet newly sworn-in Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
The US president is scheduled to then travel on to South Korea on Wednesday.
While Trump has imposed significant tariffs on almost all US trade partners, he has threatened to hit China with higher levies than anywhere else.
Countries have been anxiously anticipating a breakthrough in the tensions, hoping Washington and Beijing can avoid a full-blown trade war that could do catastrophic damage to the global economy.
In a major escalation in US-China tensions earlier this month, Beijing announced that it would require companies everywhere to acquire a licence to export rare-earth magnets and some semiconductor materials that contain even trace amounts of minerals sourced from China or are produced using Chinese technology.
The proposed rules, which are set to take effect on December 1, have raised fears of substantial disruption to global supply chains.
Rare earths, a group of 17 minerals including holmium, cerium and dysprosium, are critical to the manufacture of countless high-tech products, including smartphones, electric cars and fighter jets.
Trump responded to Beijing’s move by threatening to impose a 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods from November 1.
Analysts have cast the tit-for-tat moves as efforts by the Chinese and US sides to gain leverage in their negotiations ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.
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