On May 11, the White House announced that its envoy in Geneva had reached a trade deal with the Chinese delegation led by Chinese vice premier He Lifeng. On Monday, a Reuters report detailed that both countries had reached an agreement of a 90-day tariff pause, with reciprocal tariffs coming down by 115%. After the seemingly spontaneous two-day talk in the heart of Switzerland, finance representatives from both countries bargained a deal that will inevitably reshape the global financial market since U.S. President Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
In the official statement published on Sunday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent claimed to have achieved “substantial progress between the United States and China in the very important trade talks,” and that “we will be giving details tomorrow, but I can tell you that the talks were productive.” Echoing with U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer, the trade deal was negotiated at an unprecedented speed, as C.N.N. reported a low expectation from U.S. officials that any major deals would be made due to the talks.
The Chinese counterparts have also released positive statements regarding the meeting. According to the Chinese state-affiliated media C.G.T.N., Vice Premier He Lifeng said on Sunday that “the high-level meeting on economic and trade affairs between China and the U.S. in Geneva was candid, in-depth, and constructive.” During the news conference, he also claimed that “economic and trade relations between China and the United States are not only of great significance to the two countries but also have an important impact on the stability and development of the global economy.”
Economic and trade tensions between the U.S. and China have reached an all-time high since January. The Peterson Institute states, “Average U.S. tariffs on Chinese exports now stand at 124.1 percent. These tariffs are more than 40 times higher than before the U.S.-China tariff war began in 2018 and are already 6 times higher than the average U.S. tariff on China of 20.8 percent when the second Trump administration began on January 20, 2025.” China, in retaliation, has also raised its average tariff on U.S. exports to “147.6 percent, while increasing the scope of covered U.S. exports initially from 58.3 percent…to 100 percent on April 10, when its retaliatory tariff of 84 percent affecting all imports from the United States went into effect.”
As two of the biggest economies in the world, the trade competition between the U.S. and China influences the trajectory of global development and prosperity. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s retaliatory measures against Trump’s tariffs further disrupted the global trade order. According to the B.B.C., “The U.S. and China together account for around 43% of the world economy this year,” and “China is the world’s biggest manufacturing nation which is producing far more than its population consumes domestically–$1tn goods surplus, exporting more goods to the rest of the world than it imports.” Under the extreme pressure of Trump’s tariffs and domestic economic turmoil in recent years, the Chinese leadership was compelled to attend the meeting in Geneva. Moreover, citing He Lifeng’s address on Sunday, the two countries will also coordinate on topics discussed between Xi and Trump on January 17, which included Taiwan, A.I. development, and fentanyl. With the first step of collaboration between the new Trump administration and Xi taking place, it is hard to determine how far this relationship will last before any inevitable political impasse.
