US and Chinese officials met in Paris this past week to hold trade talks aimed at setting the stage for a planned summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. This meeting could shape the future of one of the world’s most important economic relationships. According to AP News, the talks were led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. The White House said Trump planned to travel to Beijing at the end of March for what would be the first presidential visit to China since his first term in 2017.

Reactions from officials and analysts were a mix of hope and caution. According to Reuters, a source familiar with the Paris talks, China was open to buying more U.S. agricultural goods, and both sides discussed issues related to rare earth minerals and how better to manage trade and investment between the two countries. That said, China Daily made clear that Beijing’s willingness to talk is not a willingness to give in, warning that tariffs and unilateral investigations cause harm to the relationship. Gary Ng, a senior economist at French bank Natixis, told Politico that the big question heading into the summit is whether both sides can actually agree on what they have agreed on, adding that Beijing has grown frustrated with what it sees as an unpredictable US approach.

These talks mean more than trade numbers and tariff lists. They are a chance for two powerful governments to choose conversation over confrontation in a peacebuilding manner. It is encouraging that both sides keep showing up to participate in this dialogue even as outside pressures grow. But it is also worrying how easily the process can be disrupted. When a summit gets delayed because of a separate conflict in Iran, it shows that the relationship is still being treated as a bargaining tool rather than something worth protecting for its own sake. Lasting peace between major powers does not come from singular deals. It comes from building long-term trust with consistency, not pressure tactics.

The Paris meeting was the sixth round of talks between Bessent and Lifeng, coming after earlier sessions in Geneva, London, Stockholm, Madrid, and Kuala Lumpur, according to AP News and Politico. It follows a difficult 2025 in which both countries got caught in a trade war so intense that tariffs on each other’s goods briefly hit triple digits. Things calmed down after Trump and Jinping met in the South Korean city of Busan in October and agreed to a temporary truce, but the underlying problems never went away. According to Reuters, things got more complicated shortly after the Paris talks when Trump asked to delay the Beijing summit, pointing to the ongoing US military involvement in Iran. On top of that, a recent US Supreme Court ruling struck down Trump’s earlier global tariffs, which then triggered a new round of trade investigations into 16 countries, including China, adding more uncertainty to an already delicate situation.

The Paris talks ended with both sides calling the discussions constructive and agreeing to keep talking, but a real and lasting trade deal is still far from guaranteed. According to Reuters, most experts believe the relationship will hold through the current delays, and China’s main focus remains on keeping things stable enough to keep growing on its own terms. What comes next will tell us a lot about whether the world’s two biggest economies can move past short-term fixes and build something that actually lasts. For the people whose everyday lives depend on how these two countries treat each other, that question matters more than any single summit could.