The US and China agreed to cut tariffs on $30 billion in goods after Xi Jinping's Washington state visit, creating a standing Board of Trade to keep negotiating.
The United States and China have agreed to cut tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods, a deal struck after a three-day state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington that both governments are billing as a serious downshift in the trade war between the world's two largest economies.
The White House said the reciprocal reductions cover "non-sensitive goods." American farm products, fish and seafood, logs and wood products, cosmetics and medical devices will get more favorable tariff treatment in China. U.S. imports of Chinese-made small appliances, toys, holiday decorations and children's car seats will also receive preferential terms once the changes take effect.
The deal was negotiated through the U.S.-China Board of Trade, a body first proposed during President Donald Trump's visit to China in May and formally stood up during Xi's state visit this week. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said a fuller set of details, including final rates, will be released Monday.
The agreement builds on the momentum from Trump's state visit with Xi, which put trade and Taiwan at the center of three days of talks and produced the framework now coming into focus. It marks one of the sharpest cooldowns since the tariff fight erupted in early 2025, when Trump hit all Chinese imports with a 10% levy tied to fentanyl trafficking and illegal immigration.
Beijing answered with duties on American coal, liquefied natural gas, crude oil and cars. The spiral peaked in April 2025, when U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods surged to 145% after Trump's "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariffs, and China fired back with rates as high as 125%.
Negotiators in Geneva reached a 90-day truce in May 2025 that pulled U.S. tariffs down to 30% and China's to 10%. That pause was extended again in August, and a tentative understanding struck in South Korea in October 2025 committed Beijing to cracking down on fentanyl precursors, resuming soybean purchases, and easing rare-earth export limits.
For American exporters, the immediate wins land in agriculture, seafood and timber -- sectors that have spent two years absorbing retaliation and watching market share slip to Brazil, Australia and Canada. Cosmetics and medical device makers get a lower wall to climb in one of the world's largest consumer markets.
China's gains are narrower but politically useful in Washington: consumer goods such as toys, holiday decorations and child car seats are the kinds of everyday imports that feed directly into U.S. inflation math. Cheaper landed costs on those categories hand the White House an economic talking point heading into the midterms.
The Board of Trade is the structural piece that may matter more than any single tariff line. It gives both governments a standing channel to arbitrate disputes and negotiate further reductions, leaving the door open to broader agreements in the months ahead rather than a one-off truce that expires on a calendar date.
Greer said the terms were hammered out over weeks of intensive negotiation, and that a lot more details are coming Monday. Until then, neither capital has published final rates or the full product list, which means the practical impact on supply chains will not be fully clear for days.
The truce remains fragile. Tariff fights have repeatedly flared back to life after brief pauses, and the structural disputes that started the conflict -- fentanyl, industrial subsidies, rare earths, Taiwan -- have not been settled. What has changed is that both sides now have a mechanism and a political incentive to keep talking.
For Trump, the deal is a tangible deliverable from a state visit designed to show that personal diplomacy with Xi can produce results where years of bureaucratic channels did not. For Xi, it is a chance to steady an economy under pressure and ease the cost of doing business with his largest export market.
What to watch next: Monday's detail release, whether Congress moves to challenge any reduction, and whether the Board of Trade produces a second round of cuts before the end of the year. If it does, the tariff war's steepest phase may finally be behind both countries.
The US and China agreed to cut tariffs on $30 billion in goods after Xi Jinping's Washington state visit, creating a standing Board of Trade to keep negotiating.
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