The U.S. and China have reached a “framework” to implement a trade deal struck between the two sides last month in Geneva, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced.
The development comes after two days of meetings between negotiators in London and a phone call last week between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The U.S. and China announced a 90-day détente that involved reduced tariffs in May, but both sides had accused each other of running afoul of the deal.
“We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus,” Lutnick said.
“We’re going to start to implement that framework upon the approval of President Trump, and the Chinese will get their President Xi’s approval, and that’s the process,” Lutnick added, according to The Wall Street Journal.
CHINA ACCUSES US OF UNDERMINING TRADE AGREEMENT
Lutnick reportedly said he expects Trump to approve the agreement as soon as Wednesday, noting”I feel really good about where we got to.” Senior Chinese negotiator Li Chenggang also said both the U.S. and China “agreed in principle,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
The newspaper said a key goal for the American negotiators led by Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was to encourage Beijing to accelerate their exports of rare-earth minerals and magnets that contain them.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s negotiators asked the U.S. to ease restrictions on the sale of technology and other goods to China, it added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Both sides did not reveal what was agreed to in the framework, The Wall Street Journal also reported.
However, Lutnick said “We do absolutely expect that the topic of rare earth minerals and magnets, with respect to the United States of America, will be resolved in this framework implementation.”
Earlier this month, China accused the U.S. of undermining the trade agreement between the two countries.
According to a translation of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s website, a ministry spokesperson said at the time that after the discussions in Geneva the U.S. “has successively introduced a number of discriminatory restrictive measures against China, including issuing export control guidelines for AI chips, stopping the sale of chip design software (EDA) to China, and announcing the revocation of Chinese student visas.”
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“At the direction of President Trump, the Administration is aggressively moving to onshore critical supply chains, including the production of magnets, in the United States,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had said.
FOX Business’ Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.
