U.S.-China trade truce extended as Xi gets rare welcome from Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump and Melania Trump greet Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday. | AFP-JIJI

Bloomberg

Sep 24, 2026

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the U.S. and China have agreed to extend their trade truce by two months, as President Xi Jinping landed in the United States for his first state visit in eleven years.

Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan, a celebrated soprano, touched down at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington shortly before 6 p.m. on Wednesday. Donald Trump shook hands with the couple, becoming the first U.S. president in around six decades to receive a foreign counterpart at that airport, excluding visits by the pope.

Around the same time, Bessent unveiled a new Jan. 10 deadline for the trade deal struck last year to keep down tariffs between the world’s largest economies. “I don’t know whether a bigger deal can be done,” he told Fox News.

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