Beijing and Washington are working to finalize an agreement to lower import taxes on tens of billions of dollars in goods, raising hopes that a breakthrough could be announced during an upcoming presidential summit.
Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson Huang Ling announced during a weekly briefing on Thursday that negotiators are aiming to implement reciprocal tariff cuts "at an early date." According to China's official Xinhua News Agency, the proposed reductions will cover $30 billion worth of products from each country.
The potential breakthrough comes ahead of an expected meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington on September 24. This summit will mark their third face-to-face discussion over the past year, as both nations seek to stabilize their relationship amid intense economic competition.
Highlighting the importance of the upcoming talks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun remarked on Thursday that "leaders’ diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic guiding role in China-U. S. relations."
The framework for these trade discussions was established during the leaders' previous meeting in Beijing in May. At that time, Trump and Xi agreed to set up a U.S.-China Board of Trade and a parallel Board of Investment. These initiatives followed a temporary truce in a severe trade conflict that had seen both nations impose escalating punitive tariffs on each other's goods.
Current negotiations to establish the Board of Trade are heavily focused on securing these reciprocal tariff cuts. The U.S. has indicated that the objective is to pinpoint and lower tariffs on equivalent volumes of "nonsensitive" goods from both sides.
However, some experts note that the economic impact of such a deal may be muted. Gary Ng, a senior economist at French bank Natixis, pointed out that because both countries have already reduced their mutual trade dependence, the "overall trade significance will be more limited than before, given the smaller bilateral volume." Chinese exports to the U.S. dropped sharply last year following the implementation of higher U.S. tariffs.
Ng also observed that the proposed $30 billion tariff reduction would likely offer a greater relative benefit to the U.S. The figure represents approximately 28% of total U.S. exports to China, whereas it accounts for only about 10% of China's exports to the U.S.
