President Donald Trump has left Malaysia, the first stop on his three-country tour of Asia. Speaking to reporters after a bilateral meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Kuala Lumpur on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit, Trump sounded positive about the upcoming meeting with Xi.
Trump says, ‘good deal expected’
The United States and China have reached a framework agreement to avoid the 100% tariffs that President Donald Trump had earlier threatened to impose on Chinese imports, US Treasury Secretary said earlier. “We meet, as you know, in South Korea with President Xi. I think we’re going to have a good deal with China,” Trump said earlier. “They want to make a deal, and we want to make a deal. I think we’re going to have a very fair meeting with China,” he added. Trump had earlier threatened to impose a 100% levy on Chinese goods if no deal was reached by November 1.
Bessent confirms progress after ‘constructive’ talks
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on the sidelines of the summit in Kuala Lumpur. The deal comes just days before Trump’s potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that he spoke with Chinese officials and the outcome was “constructive,” which helped both sides reach an agreement. Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Bessent credited President Donald Trump’s tough tariff threat for giving him leverage in the negotiations.
“President Trump gave me a great deal of negotiating leverage with the threat of the 100 percent tariffs, and I believe we’ve reached a very substantial framework that will avoid that and allow us to discuss many other things with the Chinese,” he said.
Later, Bessent told CBS News that Trump’s 100% tariff threat on Chinese goods “has gone away.” He added, “we had a very good two-day meeting. I would believe that the – so it would be an extra 100% from where we are now, and I believe that that is effectively off the table. I would expect that the threat of the 100% has gone away, as has the threat of the immediate imposition of the Chinese initiating a worldwide export control regime,” Bessent said.
Bessent said the Chinese side had agreed to hold off on imposing restrictions on rare earth minerals, a step the US had worried could deal a blow to its economy. These minerals are crucial for producing key electronic devices. The discussions can be seen as a major de-escalation in what had become an unpredictable trade standoff between the world’s two largest economies.
In an interview with ABC News, Bessent hinted that China would delay implementing its new licensing regime for rare earth minerals by about a year. However, official Chinese readouts did not mention the deferral directly. He also mentioned that the two sides had made progress on agricultural trade, including easing China’s boycott of US-grown soybeans, which has hurt American farmers on a large scale.
Bessent also confirmed that the two sides had finalised a deal on TikTok. Trump had earlier promised to restructure the app and prevent a nationwide ban. The app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, had come under US national security scrutiny, which led Congress to pass a ban that was later signed into law by former President Joe Biden.
