Trump Cuts Tariffs on China

“President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would cut tariffs on imports from China, signaling that the highly anticipated summit here with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, had lowered the temperature in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump said Chinese imports would now be subject to a 47 percent tariff, down 10 percentage points from the average rate before the meeting. In exchange, Xi agreed to delay restrictions on rare earth minerals for a year, Trump said, granting the United States a reprieve from controls that could jeopardize supply chains for cellphones, fighter jets and many other products.”

Said Trump: “I would say on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12.”

Playbook: “As ever, the rhetoric is strong but the detail is … somewhat lacking. The two sides’ quid pro quo on tariffs, soybeans, fentanyl and rare earths is positive and broadly as expected, taking us closer to where we were before. But alarm bells will be ringing among GOP hawks over any significant increase in chips sales to China — and Trump was hazy about what had been agreed.”

Bloomberg: China and U.S. reach one-year truce on tariffs and rare earths.