US and China agree to slash tit-for-tat tariffs temporarily: US trade chief

AFP English

The United States and China have agreed to temporarily slash their tit-for-tat tariffs, with the US rate down to 30 percent and Chinese duties cut to to 10 percent, the US trade chief says. Following a weekend of trade talks in Geneva, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer tell reporters the sides had agreed to temporarily roll back "reciprocal tariffs" by 115 percentage points for a 90 day period.

Transcript

00:00I'll just make one point is that both the Chinese and the United States agree this trade

00:13meeting here in Geneva. Today with this agreement, we come to agreement that our reciprocal tariff

00:22rate will go down to 10 percent on the United States side, so it goes down 115 percent. We

00:29enter into a 90-day pause period for negotiations, which both the Chinese and the United States

00:33are very committed to, and the Chinese on their side also go down 115 percent to 10 percent,

00:39and they remove the countermeasures that they have in place. We retain our 10 percent global

00:44baseline tariff, which we have on other countries. We have, in addition to that, previous measures

00:49that we've retained, which have been, frankly, effective in reducing the U.S. bilateral trade

00:55deficit with China over the past few years. So that leaves us in a very good position all

00:59in with respect to measures on Chinese imports, but more importantly, leaves us in a constructive

01:05path forward to have a positive conversation with the Chinese.

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