US, China agree to extend trade truce by two months, work on bigger deal, Bessent says

WASHINGTON: The United States and China have agreed to extend by two months a trade truce that was due to expire on November 10, allowing more time to work on a potentially bigger trade deal, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday.

Bessent made the remarks on Fox News hours after his second meeting in four days with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng to prepare for a summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.

"We met today to see if we could do a bigger deal as opposed to just a series of smaller things," the Treasury chief said, noting that the two-month extension of the trade truce agreed in Busan, South Korea in May would give the two sides "more time to see what we can do on the economic front."

Bessent told reporters earlier that Beijing had raised the prospect of a more expansive US-China trade deal during 12 hours of talks on Sunday, but gave no details of its potential scope. Wednesday's meeting lasted about 90 minutes, Treasury said.

Asked if a deal could be negotiated by January 10, Bessent told Fox News that was not yet clear, adding Washington was also pressing China to "be a bit more fulsome" in meeting its commitments under the existing deal in coming months.

He said Beijing was meeting its requirement to buy 25 million tons of soybeans, but was lagging on its pledge to buy US$17 billion in other agricultural goods.

US officials last week said the delivery of rare earths by China was also lagging.

Thursday's summit - the second of potentially four meetings between Trump and Xi this year - could see some announcements on the two countries goal of taking tariffs off US$30 billion in non-critical goods, on financial services and agricultural purchases, Bessent said.

"Given that this could be a historic year where the leaders meet up to four times -- this being the second meeting, in Shenzhen and then in Miami -- we're open to the idea of just continuing the Busan arrangement or examining the bigger deal," Bessent told reporters earlier. "We're fine with both, and we're going to do what's best for the American people."

In a post on X, Bessent called the discussions substantive and said Treasury was focused on securing meaningful commitments that protected American workers, farmers and businesses while advancing US economic and national security interests.

Bessent said he met He at the World Bank headquarters in Washington to clear up some "unfinished business" ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, adding that the Trump administration wanted strategic stability based on "reciprocity and fairness."

Bessent, He and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met in New York on Sunday in an effort to tee up potential trade and artificial intelligence agreements for the two leaders to consider. Bessent called those talks successful, saying both sides had agreed to launch a communications "hotline" for notifying each other about AI safety incidents.

China's response to the AI hotline plan was unclear, with state news agency Xinhua acknowledging only that the two sides discussed AI.

US-China analysts say expectations on AI cooperation are low due to a lack of mutual trust on the technology and because neither side has expressed serious interest in slowing down development. In fact, Trump has said the opposite, that he would not "stifle" AI growth and would maintain the US lead over China in what he now calls "super intelligence."

The Busan "economic detente" dramatically lowered bilateral tariff rates that had escalated to triple digits after tit-for-tat retaliation over Trump's tariff hikes last year. China also had agreed to restore the flow of rare earth magnets and other critical minerals that it had severely restricted.