A short-term agreement struck between the U.S. and China early Thursday appeared to dial back a monthslong trade war between the world’s two largest economies, carrying implications for everyone from smartphone buyers to soybean farmers.
The deal came after a high-stakes meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first in-person gathering of the two leaders since Trump took office for his second term.
Some trade experts who spoke with ABC News indicated both sides had won notable concessions, though the ultimate impact may depend on whether the agreement can withstand mercurial US-China relations.
Trump said Thursday the 20% tariffs on China related to fentanyl were being reduced to 10%, bringing the total effective tax rate on Chinese imports from 57% to 47%.
The one-year agreement also addresses other issues, such as U.S. access to critical rare earth minerals and the Chinese soybean market, Trump said. The fate of social media platform TikTok remains unclear after the deal, but a thaw in tensions could influence a potential sale, some experts said.
“This is progress,” Kaiser Kuo, the host of “Sinica Podcast,” a U.S.-based podcast on current affairs in China, told ABC News. “Whether it will endure is yet to be seen.”
Rare earth minerals
Beijing said it would delay imposing dramatic restrictions on rare earth minerals — key materials for the production of computer chips necessary for goods ranging from smartphones to AI to defense technology.
China’s Ministry of Commerce confirmed the temporary suspension of those restrictions in an official readout. Trump said he believes the one-year deal will be “routinely” extended.
China dominates global production of rare earths, accounting for roughly 60% of rare earth mining and about 90% of processing capacity, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
If China had moved forward with the threatened restrictions, the policy would have hamstrung U.S. production in key sectors, Dennis Wilder, a professor at Georgetown University and former official on the White House’s National Security Council, told ABC News.
“The Chinese backdown here is real,” Wilders added, but he cautioned that yet-to-be-seen details of the commitment would determine whether U.S. access to rare earth minerals ends up fully restored.
“The U.S. is highly dependent and will be for a number of years still,” Wilders said, estimating that it would take between 5 and 10 years for the U.S. to establish a domestic supply of rare earth minerals.
Soybean farmers
Trump also said Xi had “authorized China to begin the purchase of massive amounts of Soybeans, Sorghum, and other Farm products.”
On Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business that China had agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of soybeans from U.S. farmers this year, as well as at least 25 million metric tons over each of the next three years. Such volume would return Chinese soybean purchases to annual levels recorded prior to recent trade tensions.
Trump had previously drawn criticism from some U.S. soybean farmers who have suffered losses amid the U.S.-China trade war.
Joe Janzen, a professor at the University of Illinois and its FarmDoc project, said the agreement could ease a major fear among U.S. soybean farmers about a continued loss of Chinese purchases and the drop in soybean prices that would have ensued.
“The concern has been about expectations of the future and how things could get worse,” Janzen said. “This agreement realizes what some people in the trade were thinking: There’s got to be a resolution to this conflict that means we shouldn’t see dramatically lower prices for soybeans.”
But, Janzen cautioned: “The market still has to process to what degree it thinks this is really binding in the medium and long run.” He noted China’s failure to fulfill the terms of a commitment on soybean purchases hatched out in a “phase one” trade deal reached during Trump’s first term.
TikTok
Last month, Trump announced an agreement that would pave the way for social media giant TikTok to come under the control of a group of U.S. investors.
Ahead of the meeting on Wednesday, China had not provided public approval of the deal, leaving the fate of a potential U.S.-based TikTok uncertain. China continued to withhold its approval after the summit, saying only that it would collaborate with the U.S. to “properly address” the topic.
Still, Bessent told Fox News on Thursday that China had “finalized” its approval in recent days.
“I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll finally see a resolution to that,” Bessent added.
The potential end to the standoff comes 10 months after a ban on the China-based app was set to take effect in January. Instead, Trump delayed the ban multiple times, while assuring app stores and server companies that they would not face penalties in the meantime.
Alan Rozenshtein, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who has closely tracked the TikTok ban, said he would await a firm, detailed agreement before weighing in on whether TikTok had complied with the divestiture required to lift the ban.
“It’s been so chaotic that until there’s a signed piece of paper, somewhere I’ll wait to have an opinion,” Rozenshtein said.
Scrutiny has centered on the fate of TikTok’s algorithm, a proprietary formula that fuels the attention-grabbing social media platform. U.S. critics have raised concern about potential Chinese manipulation of the content feed if the algorithm remains under the ownership of a China-based company.
Wilder, of Georgetown, said the algorithm may be a sticking point in the TikTok sale, since the Chinese view the algorithm as valuable intellectual property while some U.S. officials consider it a critical part of any agreement.
“It seems to me that one side will have to give on this issue and so far neither side has shown a willingness to do that,” Wilder said.
ABC News’ Jack Moore and David Brennan contributed to this report.
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