Top economic officials from the United States and China will meet on Sunday the second day of high-stakes negotiations in Geneva to discuss tensions in President Trump’s trade war.
Negotiations have had a significant impact on the global economy, which has been shocked by the tariffs imposed by the United States and China in recent months. Mr. Trump imposed a minimum tariff of 145% on all Chinese imports, while China hit U.S. products with a 125% import tax.
This punitive taxation is already destroying the world’s supply chains. American companies are scrambling to source products from countries outside China, while Chinese factories are looking for ways to tariff U.S. tariffs and export more to Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, many U.S. businesses are weighing the extent to which they can raise prices to offset tariff costs.
Economists warn that trade disputes will slow global growth and fuel inflation and could put the United States in recession. These economic fears forced Mr. Trump to reach a deal with China.
After about seven hours of talks on Saturday, the U.S. said it would not issue any formal statement about the lawsuit.
Mr. Trump called the initial conversation a success.
“A very good meeting was held in Switzerland today with China,” Mr. Trump wrote in The Society of Truth. “A lot of things were discussed, very agreeable. The total reset was carried out in a friendly but constructive way.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer led the talks in Washington. For Beijing, the negotiations were led by China’s Vice Premier of Economic Policy He Lifeng.
Tariffs effectively cut off trade between the world’s two largest economies.
Before the meeting, Mr. Trump suggested he would be willing to reduce tariffs from 145% to 80%. But White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said China will have to make concessions to reduce tariffs.
The Trump administration accuses China of unfairly subsidizing key sectors of its economy and flooding the world with cheap goods. The United States has also been forcing China to take more aggressive steps to curb exports of fentanyl precursors, which killed thousands of Americans.
China has been firmly saying it does not intend to make trade concessions to Trump’s tariffs. Officials insist that the state agreed to hold talks at the request of the United States.
The trade negotiations this weekend are intended to lay the foundation for broader economic negotiations between the two countries. Economists are skeptical of what might be a quick deal.
“We think the point is to lower expectations for talks between us and Chinese officials this weekend,” Nancy Vanden Houten, an American economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a study on Saturday.
Ms. Vanden Houten explained that even if the U.S. lowers the tariff rate on imports to 80%, the overall effective tariff rate for imports is triple as predicted by Trump when he was elected.
But Mr. Trump seems ready to promote any concessions made by China to win the United States.
Mr. Trump reiterated his appeal to China open its markets to U.S. companies on Saturday: “Great progress has been made!!!”
