US-China trade deal soon? Top negotiators reach framework of agreement as Beijing stares at 157% tariff

Top trade negotiators of the United States and China said on Sunday they had come to terms to a framework for a trade deal ahead of the meeting of Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

The agreement comes less than a week before the US was set to implement its sky-high tariffs on China at 157 per cent, which had triggered global trade tensions.

Trade negotiators for US and China said they had reached consensus on a wide range of conflicting points, laying the roadmap of a much-awaited trade deal as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet later next week.

“We are moving forward to the final details of the type of agreement that the leaders can review and decide if they want to conclude together,” US trade representative Jamieson Greer told reporters in Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur, where the ASEAN Summit is being hosted.

Chinese trade negotiator Li Chenggang called the talks between the US and China “candid and in-depth discussions” on the upcoming trade deal, revealing that the two partners had reached a “preliminary consensus”.

The trade negotiators were in Kuala Lumpur for a meeting of the ASEAN summit, where Donald Trump began a nearly weeklong trip to Asia.

US-China trade deal: What was discussed?

According to the Chinese side, as quoted by The New York Times, the talks between the countries regarding the US-China trade deal featured a wide range of topics including bilateral trade, export controls, extensions of reciprocal tariff, fentanyl-related tariffs and cooperation on combating fentanyl trafficking among other things.

According to Greer, the US and China also discussed the possible extension of the truces the countries had reached earlier this year in terms of tariffs.

The discussions also included the topic of rare earth exports, on which China has imposed strict curbs.

“We talked about extending the truce, we talked about rare earths, of course, we talked about all kinds of topics,” Greer said, as per NYT.

Is China going to face 157% tariff?

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the trade talk framework, and said that the two sides had reached a “very substantial framework.”

Speaking later in an interview with CBS News, the Trump aide said that the additional 100 per cent tariff that the US was supposed to implement from November 1 on Chinese goods “is effectively off the table”.

He further said that the US expects Beijing to make “substantial” soybean purchases and offer a deferral on sweeping rare earth controls. The US wouldn’t change its export controls directed at China, he added.

“So I would expect that the threat of the 100% has gone away, as has the threat of the immediate imposition of the Chinese initiating a worldwide export control regime,” Bessent said in the interview, as per Bloomberg.

Separately, he told ABC News that he expected China to delay is rare earth restrictions “for a year while they reexamine it.”

Donald Trump himself predicted a “good deal with China” as he spoke with reporters on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Kuala Lumpur, saying he expected additional leader-level follow-up meetings in China and the US.

“They want to make a deal, and we want to make a deal,” Trump said.