Articles

# ART OF THE DEAL: U.S., China Ink Initial Trade Deal

The White House
May 12, 2025

President Donald J. Trump and his administration have secured another good deal for the American people — an initial trade deal with China that reduces tariffs, ends retaliation, and sets Americans on the path for truly free, fair trade.

It’s the second significant trade breakthrough of the past week following President Trump’s landmark trade deal with the United Kingdom — and comes as President Trump enacts his transformational vision for liberating Americans from the unfair trade practices that have gripped workers and businesses for decades.

At a press conference in Geneva, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer laid out the details of the initial agreement:

- Secretary Bessent: “We have reached an agreement on a 90-day pause and substantially moved down the tariff levels — both sides, on the reciprocal tariffs, will move their tariffs down 115%.”
- Ambassador Greer: “Both the Chinese and the United States agreed to work constructively together on fentanyl and there’s a positive path forward there, as well.”
- Secretary Bessent: “The upside surprise for me from this weekend was the level of Chinese engagement on the fentanyl crisis in the United States. They brought the Deputy Minister for Public Safety … and he had a very robust and highly detailed discussion.”
- Ambassador Greer: “We are going to have our economy continue taking off as we put structure around these negotiations and get global trade into a better place.”

Secretary Bessent then made the rounds on television to inform the American people of the landmark deal:

- On negotiations: “It was always respectful. We had the two largest economies in the world. We were firm — and we moved forward … We came with a list of problems that we were trying to solve and I think we did a good job on that.”
- On stopping precursors of fentanyl from China: “This is a priority for President Trump and, indeed, the whole administration … Hundreds of thousands of Americans die every year and I think that we saw here in Geneva that the Chinese are now serious about assisting the U.S. in stopping the flow of precursor drugs.”
- On non-tariff barriers: “We’ve had free trade, and as you said, that has not worked for the American people. There’s something called the ‘China shock,’ which has gutted our manufacturing sector … They subsidize labor, they subsidize capital goods, and they have exported that to us and to the rest of the world. We have put up tariffs to push back on that, so it will be a matter of what is the equilibrium level on tariffs and also getting China to open their markets for American companies.”
- On supply chains: “Bringing back our important strategic industries can be a result of tariffs, but it’s also a result of national will — so this administration is running full speed to make sure that what we saw during COVID never happens again.”
- On past agreements: “In January 2020, President Trump produced a template — we had an excellent trade agreement with China, and the Biden Administration chose not to enforce it. The Chinese delegation basically told us that once President Biden came into office, they just ignored their obligations.”

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