Former Trade Official: Trump-China Trade Truce Extension "Demeans United States"

President Donald Trump is extending a tariff truce with China for another 90 days, stabilizing trade ties between the world’s two largest economies.

Trump signed an order extending the truce, CNBC reported on Monday, citing a White House official. The truce, which saw the US and China agree to reduce tit-for-tat tariff hikes and ease export restrictions on rare earth magnets and certain technologies, was due to expire Tuesday.

Negotiators from both sides reached a preliminary agreement to keep the arrangement last month in Sweden, and the president’s advisers had expressed optimism he would approve it.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump, speaking to reporters earlier Monday, demurred when asked if he would extend the deal. Senior Fellow at New York University, and Former British Trade Official Ed Price criticized the extension on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.

The extension will ease worries of a renewed tariff war that threatens to choke off trade between the US and China. An escalation between Washington and Beijing earlier this year shook global financial markets.

It also gives the countries more time to discuss other unresolved issues such as duties tied to fentanyl trafficking that Trump has levied on Beijing, American concerns about Chinese purchases of sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil and disagreements around US business operations in China.

The extension may also clear the path for Trump to visit China to meet with President Xi Jinping in late October, around the time of an international meeting in South Korea that the US leader is likely to attend.

Trump earlier this year ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese goods, and Beijing responded in kind. US tariffs on Chinese imports ultimately reached 145%, and China curbed access to magnets critical to US manufacturers. The two sides reached a 90-day truce in May, under which the US lowered its China duties to 30% while Beijing reduced levies on US goods to 10% and agreed to resume rare earth exports.

Trump’s willingness to parlay with China has prompted concerns from national security hawks that he’s unwilling to crack down on the the US’s biggest geopolitical rival. Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. reached deals with the Trump administration to secure export licenses by agreeing to pay 15% of their revenues from certain Chinese artificial intelligence chip sales to the US government.

Trump earlier Monday also signaled openness to separately allowing Nvidia to sell a scaled-back version of its most advanced AI chip to China, saying that “it’s possible I’d make a deal.”

With the deadline nearing, Trump on Sunday had called on Beijing to quadruple purchases of American soybeans, something he said would held reduce the US trade deficit with China.

Trump’s decision to extend the truce follows two days of discussions in Stockholm in July led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng — the third round of talks between the Washington and Beijing in less than three months.

While Chinese officials and the Communist Party’s official newspaper had signaled satisfaction with the Stockholm talks, and US Cabinet secretaries predicted an extension, the pact remained fragile. Bessent had said that any decision to extend the deal would be up to Trump.

Rare Earths

At issue in the ongoing dialogue is how the two countries will seek to maintain a stable trading relationship while applying barriers like tariffs and export controls to limit each other’s progress in critical sectors including battery technology, defense and semiconductors.

Both sides have been taking steps to turn down the temperature and reduce flashpoints recently, with Chinese exports of rare earth magnets starting to recover in June and the US saying it would approve shipments of a semiconductor used for artificial intelligence that it had blocked.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who participated in the Stockholm negotiations, has sounded an optimistic note on discussions with China over rare earth flows, saying that the US had secured commitments about their supply.

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