US and China sound confident note after trade talks

Top US and Chinese negotiators sounded a positive note on weekend trade talks, hailing what they called constructive discussions ahead of a meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping planned for this week.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the talks on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur had eliminated the threat of Trump’s 100% tariffs on Chinese imports starting November 1. Bessent said he expects China to delay implementation of its rare earth minerals and magnets licensing regime by a year while the policy is reconsidered.

Trump and Xi are due to meet on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, to sign off on the terms. While the White House has officially announced the highly anticipated Trump-Xi talks, China has yet to confirm that the two leaders will meet.

“I think we have a very successful framework for the leaders to discuss on Thursday,” Bessent told reporters after he and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and top trade negotiator Li Chenggang for a fifth round of in-person discussions since May.

Bessent said he anticipates that a tariff truce with China will be extended beyond its November 10 expiration date, and that China will revive substantial purchases of US soybeans after buying none in September in favor of soybeans from Brazil and Argentina.

US soybean farmers “will feel very good about what’s going on both for this season and the coming seasons for several years” once the deal’s terms are announced, Bessent told the ABC program “This Week.”

Greer told the “Fox News Sunday” program that both sides agreed to pause some punitive actions and found “a path forward where we can have more access to rare earths from China, we can try to balance out our trade deficit with sales from the United States.”

China’s Li Chenggang said the two sides reached a “preliminary consensus” and will next go through their respective internal approval processes. “The US position has been tough,” Li said. “We have experienced very intense consultations and engaged in constructive exchanges in exploring solutions and arrangements to address these concerns.”

Trump arrived in Malaysia on Sunday for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, his first stop in a five-day Asia tour that is expected to culminate in a face-to-face with Xi in South Korea on Thursday.

After the talks, Trump struck an optimistic tone, saying: “I think we’re going to have a deal with China.” Trump threatened new 100% tariffs on Chinese goods and other trade curbs, starting on November 1st, in retaliation for China’s expanded export controls on rare-earth magnets and minerals. China and the United States rolled back most of their triple-digit tariffs on each other’s goods under a trade truce due to expire on November 10th.

“We’ve agreed to meet. We’re going to meet them later in China, and we’re going to meet in the US, in either Washington or at Mar-a-Lago,” President Trump said. Among Trump’s talking points with Xi are Chinese purchases of US soybeans, concerns around democratically governed Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, and the release of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai.