Trump Holds News Conference
BBC News
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Trump Holds News Conference
BBC News
US markets have surged after the US and China agree to reduce tariffs on each other's goods for 90 days
Markets in the US are now trading at similar levels to the beginning of the year, our New York business reporter Natalie Sherman writes – marking a significant recovery since US President Donald Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs in April
Trump says his administration has achieved a "total reset with China"
Meanwhile, European and Asian markets have also risen after the major agreement between Washington and Beijing, a major de-escalation of their trade war
US tariffs on Chinese imports will fall from 145% to 30%, while Chinese tariffs on US goods will fall from 125% to 10%
It is a bigger cut than expected, writes our correspondent Theo Leggett – but 30% is still a high tariff
Edited by Emily McGarvey and Jenna Moon
Trump says his administration has achieved a "total reset with China" with the latest agreement, after weeks of an escalating trade war.
"The best part of the deal", Trump adds, is that "China agreed to open itself up to American business".
Trump adds the US has "opened" itself to Chinese imports but that "they didn't open their country to us".
"It never made sense to me. It's not fair," Trump says.
He also says China will "suspend and remove all of its non-monetary [trade] barriers", but says that the deal still needs to be signed.
US President Donald Trump is now speaking at the White House.
Commenting on further negotiations related to the tariff agreement with China, Trump says he will speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping "maybe at the end of the week".
We'll bring you the key lines in our next few posts – you can also follow along by clicking Watch live at the top of the page.
Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter
The stock market in the US is soaring this morning, a reflection of the outcome of US-China trade talks over the weekend, which yielded a much more significant drop in tariffs than many analysts had expected.
The S&P 500 is up roughly 2.6%, the Dow by about 2.5% and the Nasdaq by more than 3.3%.
The market had already recovered significant ground since 2 April, when Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs sparked turmoil.
In the US, the stock indexes are now trading at levels close to where they started the year.
The bell has sounded on Wall Street and trading in the world's biggest economy is now open.
Here's where the three main indexes are on opening:
Chen Yan
Reporting from Hong Kong
Companies in China are preparing for more tariffs down the line, despite the 90-day pause announced earlier today.
“To be honest, many Chinese companies no longer believe that tariffs will remain unchanged. For businesses, the best they can do is build a moat around their company before the next round of tariffs arrives,” said Elaine Li, head of Greater China at Atlas Ways, which offers services for Chinese enterprises’ global development.
Elaine Li told BBC Chinese that for many Chinese exporters, the latest tariff reductions are only temporary.
The rapid changes in tariffs led them to a more diversified global strategy, and they have already moved from getting orders passively to exploring international markets proactively. “It’s hard to wake someone who’s pretending to sleep, but it’s even harder to put someone to sleep when has just awakened.”
Reacting to the 90-day pause in US-China tariffs, the European Chamber of Commerce in China says while it's "encouraged by the decision, uncertainty remains".
"This is partly because certain tariffs have only been suspended for 90 days, and partly because of the erratic nature in which these tariffs were implemented in the first place," it says in a statement.
It says it hopes to see both sides continue to engage in dialogue to "resolve differences, and avoid taking measures that will disrupt global trade and result in collateral damage for those caught in the cross-fire".
California congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat, welcomed the Trump administration's US-China trade agreement but still snuck in a diss.
"Just like I TOLD YOU. Trump caves on China," Swalwell wrote on X, re-posting a previous post of his from April that said "Trump will cave on tariffs".
He attributed the temporary reduction in tariffs to pressure from Democrats, without going into detail.
"Thank you! YOU went to the town halls and town squares. WE did this," he says.
Earlier, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that both China and the US would lower their reciprocal tariffs by 115 percentage points for 90 days from 14 May, after the two countries held talks in Switzerland at the weekend.
In just under an hour, US stock markets will open, and our business editor Simon Jack says the S&P 500 is expected to open above the level it was the day before Trump's "Liberation Day".
As we reported earlier, global stock markets have welcomed news of the agreement between the US and China to pause tariffs for 90 days.
Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index was still trading when the announcement was made, and jumped on the news, ending the day up 3%.
European stock markets also saw a boost following the announcement.
We'll bring you the latest once trading in the US is under way.
Josh Martin
BBC News
"I'm glad sanity is back in style," says Tat Kei, a Chinese exporter of personal care appliances to the US, whose factory employs 200 people in Shenzhen.
However, with the US still placing a 30% import tax on items arriving from China, he says prices will still rise for US customers, despite the tariffs truce.
Tat Kei's still looking to move some production to south-east Asia.
"President Trump is going to be here for the next 3.5 years. I don't think this is going to be the end of it…not by a long shot," he says.
Tat Kei earlier spoke to the BBC World Service's Business Dailyprogramme when the US and China were still engaging in tit-for-tat tariffs and most US-bound orders at his factories were cancelled.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tells Fox News that the latest US-China agreement on trade was "an extraordinary first step in the right direction".
China also agreed to "continue having discussions" about further opening its market to US products and goods, Leavitt says, and to "continue seriously discussing the grave impact that Chinese produced fentanyl is having" in the US.
"President Trump will continue negotiations with China, so we can hopefully, inevitably get to a fair and comprehensive, big trade deal," she adds.
Jonathan Josephs
Business reporter
This weekend’s trade agreement between the US and China is certainly good news for shipping companies.
Remember, about 90% of global trade is moved by sea. Everything from clothes and toys to furniture and cars.
The extraordinary tariffs had led to a collapse in the amount of goods being moved across the Pacific Ocean but investors sense that will rebound and that will mean more profits.
Just two of the world’s five biggest shipping companies are traded on stock markets.
And the direction of travel is clear, five hours into the European trading day Denmark’s Maersk is up more than 11.5% whilst Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd is up more than 13.5%.
Both companies have welcomed the agreement with Maersk earlier saying “we hope it can lay the foundation for the parties to also reach a permanent deal that can create the long-term predictability our customers need”.
Meanwhile Hapag-Lloyd says its now expecting an increase in bookings on sailings from China to the US and that might mean it uses larger ships than it had otherwise planned.
For those of you not steeped in global trade policy, here's a brief timeline of the events that led up to the 90-day pause in tariffs between the US and China:
Liv McMahon
Technology reporter
You may recall a law last year ordering TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the app or see it banned in the US.
Since then President Trump has extended the deadline twice to June 2025, leaving everyone wondering what is actually going on.
The Chinese government would likely need to approve such a sale – which means it’s inevitable such a big sticking point between the US and China might have gotten muddled up in the trade talks.
Trump told NBC News in May there were people ready to buy the app – but his tariffs had limited China’s ability to do business with the US.
He said he believed TikTok would be a “very easy subject to solve” in a tariff deal.
So a 90 day pause on tariffs – and pledges to continue trade discussions – may help secure a TikTok sale.
Stuart Lau
Live reporter
Despite the US and China calling this a joint agreement, people in Beijing will interpret it as the Trump administration walking back from the tariffs, says Janka Oertel, director of the Asia programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
"We are back to square one, now negotiating can begin. The outcome is uncertain but China is in a psychologically stronger position now than before," Oertel says.
However, Oertel says "it's not really a deal yet" without seeing details on fresh commitments from Beijing on key issues like market access or expanded imports of US goods.
Michael Race
Business reporter
That’s a question many will be pondering this morning as everyone digests the truce announcement between the world’s two biggest economies.
Economists at Deutsche Bank have suggested the lowering of tariffs, and last week’s UK-US deal on them, means there’s both “a likely cap and floor” to Trump’s rates of 10 to 30%.
“The UK has one of the least imbalanced relationships with the US and now has a universal tariff rate of 10%. China has one of the most imbalanced relationships and now has a tariff rate of 30,” says George Saravelos, head of FX research at the investment bank.
“It is reasonable that these two numbers now set the bounds of where American tariffs will end up this year, a material increase in visibility from just last week.”
After months of tit-for-tat tariff measures, the US and China have announced a major reduction in levies against each other, albeit temporarily.
It marks a de-escalation of the ongoing trade war between the two countries. Here's what we've learned so far today:Jonathan Josephs
Business reporter
It’s interesting that these talks between the US and China happened in Geneva.
Switzerland’s neutrality has long lent itself to helping solve major global problems and it is also home to the World Trade Organization (WTO) whose role is to draw up and enforce the rules of global trade.
I understand that head of the WTO, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has been following the talks closely and spoke to Chinese Vice Premier He after the weekend meeting.
In a statement she said she was “pleased with the positive outcome of the talks”, adding that they “mark a significant step forward and, we hope, bode well for the future”.
She underlined how important that is for the entire global economy. Discussions on how to reform the WTO so that’s it better suited to the modern global economy have been going on for some time.
The WTO has been warning that if the global economy were to split into two blocs it could result in a long-term reduction in global real GDP of nearly 7%.
Simon Jack
Business editor
The news that the US and China will roll back the majority of the swingeing tariffs imposed on each other, at least temporarily, has given stock markets a boost and seen the value of safe haven assets like gold fall.
The benchmark S&P 500 share index in the US is now expected to open above the level it was the day before Donald Trump rocked the world financial system with a universal tariff of 10% and very steep so-called reciprocal tariffs on high exporting countries in Asia.
The 90-day pause that was announced very quickly after markets – including the safe harbour of US government bonds – plunged saw markets recover just over half their losses.
Those losses in US shares will have been fully reversed if markets open in the US at the level they have been trading overnight in Asia.
But some investors are privately concerned that the bounce back in shares is overly optimistic given that trade still has, and will continue to have, significantly more friction, cost and risk.
Danish shipping giant Maersk says the US-China agreement to pause tariffs for 90 days is a step in the right direction.
Shares in Maersk traded 12.9% higher as of 09:48 GMT (10:48 BST).
The firm says it hopes the deal "can lay the foundation for the parties to also reach a permanent deal that can create the long-term predictability our customers need".
"Right now, our customers have gotten 90 days of clarity with reduced tariffs, and we are working hard to help them make the best use of this window," it adds.
Nick Edser
Business reporter
Stock markets have welcomed news of the agreement between the US and China as investors hope that a global trade war can be averted.
Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index was still trading when the announcement was made, and jumped on the news, ending the day up 3%.
European stock markets are also higher and early indications are that the main US stock markets will open up by more than 2%.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, says the agreement is "a major breakthrough" as far as investors are concerned and has been welcomed "with open arms".
“Some people thought the best-case outcome from the weekend’s discussions would be an agreement to simply keep talks going," he tells me.
"Therefore, to have reached an initial deal so quickly and one that rolls back tariffs by a large amount is a pleasant surprise."
Oil prices jumped on hopes that global growth will be boosted by the tariff agreement, and the price of benchmark Brent crude rose more than 3% to $64.14 a barrel.
However, the price of gold fell 3% to $3,224.34 an ounce.
The disruption caused by President Trump’s tariffs has helped the gold price to rise in recent weeks as it is seen as a safer asset in times of uncertainty.
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