China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced.
The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers around the world,” the White House said, meaning the effective removal of controls China imposed in April this year and October 2022.
Photo: EPA
The US and China previously said Beijing would suspend more restrictive controls announced last month for one year.
Washington is pausing some of Trump’s tariffs on China for an additional year and is halting plans to implement a 100 percent tariff on Chinese exports to the US. The White House said that the US is to extend the expiration of certain Section 301 tariff exclusions, currently due to expire on Nov. 29, this year until Nov. 10 next year.
Under the trade pact, according to the White House, China agreed to pause sweeping controls on rare earth magnets in exchange for a US agreement to roll back an expansion of curbs on Chinese companies.
The US agreed to cut a fentanyl-related tariff in half, from 10 percent from 20 percent, while Beijing resumes purchases of US soybeans and other agricultural products. The US has said China is to buy 12 million tonnes of soybeans during the current season, and a minimum of 25 million tonnes a year for the next three years.
Trump on Friday indicated he would like to remove all of the fentanyl-related tariffs if China continued to crack down on exports of the drug and precursor chemicals used to make it.
“As soon as we see that, we’ll get rid of the other 10 percent,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday.
While the agreement has calmed tensions, the pact might be a short-term truce in an extended trade fight with the measures just meant to last one year, and despite addressing some key issues — and with both sides winning key concessions — the agreement fails to comprehensively address all of the issues at the heart of the US-China trade fight and other geopolitical flashpoints, such as Taiwan and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump has signed off on a plan that would see an US consortium buy the US operations of ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok app, but Beijing has yet to formally approve that sale. The US president has said there would be cooperation on energy, saying that China had agreed to purchases of oil and gas from Alaska.
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