China and US agree to fresh trade negotiations to ease tariff battle

China and the United States agreed on Saturday to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle.

Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 per cent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation.

Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that Vice Premier He Lifeng and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had “candid, in-depth and constructive exchanges” during a Saturday morning call, and that both sides agreed to hold a new round of trade talks “as soon as possible”.

On social media, Bessent described the call as “frank and detailed”, and said they would meet “in-person next week to continue our discussions”.

Bessent had previously accused China of seeking to harm the rest of the world by tightening restrictions rare earths, which are critical to everything from smartphones to guided missiles. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also participated in the call, according to the report by Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

Hours before the call, Fox News released excerpts of an interview with Trump in which he said he would meet Xi at the APEC summit after all.

Trump told the outlet that the 100 per cent tariff on goods from China was not sustainable.

“It’s not sustainable, but that’s what the number is... They forced me to do that,” he said. — Coordinated response — The high-level video call came as Washington worked to rally Group of Seven finance ministers in response to the latest Chinese export controls.

For now, the G7 ministers have agreed to coordinate a short-term response and diversify suppliers, the EU’s economy commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters in Washington.

Speaking after the grouping met this week, Dombrovskis noted the vast majority of rare earth supplies come from China, meaning that diversification could take years.

“We agreed, both bilaterally with the US and at the G7 level, to coordinate our approach,” he said on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s fall meetings.

Countries would also exchange information on their contacts with Chinese counterparts as they work out short-term solutions, he added. German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil told journalists he hopes that Trump and Xi’s meeting can help to resolve much of the US-China trade conflict.

“We have made it clear within the G7 that we do not agree with China’s approach,” he added, referring to the group of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva also expressed hope Friday for an agreement between the countries to cool tensions.

The US-China trade war reignited this year as Trump promised sweeping tariffs on imports soon after returning to office.

At one point, US-China tariffs escalated to triple-digit levels, effectively halting some trade as businesses waited for a resolution.

The two countries have since lowered their respective levies but their truce has remained shaky.

Separately, Europe, in its trade dealings with China, needs to act “in a more offensive way” to protect its own interests and those of its companies, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said on Saturday. The United States’ tariffs this year have caused global turmoil as China has retaliated and rerouted some of the products it can no longer export to the US to other markets.

“When it comes to China, let me only say one thing: China needs Europe more than Europe needs China,” Nagel, who sits on the ECB’s Governing Council, said in Washington.

“We are a strong economy. We are four hundred fifty million people... So we should play the European card in a more offensive way.”

Nagel said Europe needed to avoid a trade war with China and should maintain a dialogue but also needed to protect its own markets.

“The point that I would like to say here is that Europe should play the cards in a way that we are more convinced about ourselves, because the most important market for the European is Europe itself,” Nagel told a financial event.

As US tariffs lead China to reroute industrial and intermediate goods to other markets where they are offered at prices local companies cannot match, economists say, major European companies are also being hit by Beijing’s restrictions on materials such as rare earths whose production it dominates. In China, European companies are also struggling to compete with domestic brands.

Agencies