U.S. not rushing China trade truce extension.
China expected to accept prior U.S. tariff rates.
New boards to manage trade, investment, AI.
Atlas AI
The United States is not moving quickly to extend a tariff and critical-minerals trade truce with China that expires in November 2025, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday in Paris. Bessent said there was enough time to renew the arrangement in meetings later this year. His comments followed last week’s summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Bessent said he believed China would accept a restoration of prior U.S. tariff rates through new Section 301 duties, as long as they do not exceed previously agreed levels. He said China had benefited in recent months from lower tariffs after a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down global emergency duties.
Extra U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods are currently 10% under a temporary measure that expires in July, down from about 20% under the truce. Bessent said the administration’s view is that there is time to deal with an extension later, and that conditions are stable.
He also said China’s performance on its commitments related to critical minerals had been “satisfactory, but not excellent,” and that the two sides would continue to review compliance.
Tariffs and managed-trade talks
Bessent said future negotiations would focus on building bilateral protocols for managed trade, investment and artificial intelligence. He said talks would center on how to structure these frameworks and what goods and sectors could be covered.
Under a planned “Board of Trade,” the two sides would identify about $30 billion in non-strategic goods for potential tariff reductions or eliminations. Bessent said the initial list could include U.S. energy products and Chinese consumer goods that are not made domestically in the United States.
Investment screening and AI guardrails
Bessent said a proposed “Board of Investment” would examine two-way investment and aim to identify Chinese deals that could align with U.S. national security interests. He said the initiative would seek to clarify which transactions could proceed without triggering national security reviews.
He also said the two sides planned to begin consultations on guardrails for powerful AI tools within four to eight weeks.
Officials are expected to continue discussing the truce and related issues in subsequent meetings later this year, including ahead of a possible Trump-Xi meeting in Washington in September.
