Trade Truce Extended to January as Trump Welcomes Xi to Washington
The American and Chinese truce that paused a trade war of mutual tariffs above 100% has been pushed from 10 November to 10 January, the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said, hours after Mr Trump greeted Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. It buys “more time to see what we can do on the economic front”. Analysts had expected six months or more. Beijing and Washington should be “partners, not rivals”, Mr Xi said on arrival.
Two months is not a settlement, it is a stay of execution timed to keep the tariff cliff away from the American midterms and to give Thursday’s talks something to build on. The president greeted his guest personally at Andrews, the first time an American president has welcomed a foreign leader there in eleven years. What each wants is already visible: Mr Xi is expected to press for a halt to Taiwan arms sales, with Washington holding a roughly $14bn package in abeyance as what Mr Trump has called a negotiating chip, and Beijing is said to be offering help pressing Iran in return. Kurt Campbell, a former deputy secretary of state, called it “the historical reincarnation of what we often referred to in antiquity as single combat”. Watch whether Taiwan is named in any communiqué.