US, China resume truce

Two days of talks yield 'framework'

- ALAN RAPPEPORT ANA SWANSON JONATHAN SWAN

The United States and China agreed to roll back some of the punitive measures they had taken against each others' economies and return to a trade truce reached in May, officials from both countries said on Tuesday.

After two days of marathon negotiations in London, top economic officials from the United States and China are now expected to present the new “framework agreement” to their leaders, President Donald Trump and China's top leader, Xi Jinping, for final approval.

The agreement, the full details of which were not immediately released, is intended to return the relationship to the terms that the United States and China reached in Switzerland last month. That deal had unravelled in recent weeks, after China continued to restrict shipments of valuable rare earth minerals and magnets needed by US manufacturers.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was part of the negotiating team, told reporters gathered in London after the talks that American concerns over China’s restrictions on exports of minerals and magnets had been resolved. He also said that the measures that the United States had taken in response to those Chinese restrictions would be reversed “in a balanced way.”

US officials had tried to put pressure on China in recent weeks by clamping down on exports of American products and technology, including chemicals, airplane parts and software, as well as proposing barring Chinese students from enrolling in universities in the United States.

A person familiar with the negotiations who was not authorised to speak publicly said the Chinese side had agreed to begin sending the United States rare earths, while the United States would roll back export controls implemented on Chinese products since the meeting in Geneva, and that both efforts would happen simultaneously.