{"id":137191,"date":"2025-05-12T20:15:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T20:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/u-s-and-china-agree-to-slash-tariffs-for-90-days-as-trade-talks-continue-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T20:15:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T20:15:59","slug":"u-s-and-china-agree-to-slash-tariffs-for-90-days-as-trade-talks-continue-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/u-s-and-china-agree-to-slash-tariffs-for-90-days-as-trade-talks-continue-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. and China agree to slash tariffs for 90 days as trade talks continue – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

BREAKING: Stocks soar, with the Dow adding 1,140 points and S&P 500 rising 3.2% <\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Profile
Sections
Local
tv
Featured
More From NBC
Follow NBC News
news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
HONG KONG \u2014 The United States and China<\/a> announced a 90-day pause on most of their recent tariffs <\/a>on each o<\/a>t<\/a>her<\/a>, fueling hop<\/a>e<\/a>s on Wall Street <\/a>of a cooldown in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The combined U.S. tariff rate on Chinese imports will be cut to 30% from 145%, while China\u2019s levies on U.S. imports will fall to 10% from 125%, the countries said<\/a> early Monday morning.
Officials met in Geneva<\/a> over the weekend for their first face-to-face talks since President Donald Trump’s shock tariff rollout on April 2, when he imposed 84% duties on Chinese imports, adjusted them to to 125% soon afterward, and hiked them further to 145% a day later.
The new 30% rate is the sum of the 20% duty Trump imposed early in his second term over alleged Chinese failures to curb fentanyl flows and the 10% universal tariff he has applied to nearly all foreign imports.
Markets s<\/a>urged<\/a> on news of the detente. The broad-based S&P 500 was trading 3.1% higher Monday afternoon, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added more than 1,100 points, a roughly 2.7% gain. The tech-focused Nasdaq surged 4.1%.
European indexes posted modest gains Monday. Markets across Asia had upbeat sessions as well ahead of the news, anticipating some kind of trade agreement and also welcoming a ceasefire between India and Pakistan<\/a> that largely seems to be holding. Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng Index soared on news of the U.S.-China agreement, closing more than 3% higher.
Yet some analysts have urged caution, noting that tariffs remain far higher than before Trump regained office. That suggests many consumer goods<\/a> \u2014 from cars<\/a> and groceries<\/a> to fireworks \u2014 are set to see price hikes. Federal data is set to provide a fresh inflation snapshot on Tuesday morning.
\u201cThe full set of U.S. tariffs would still be considerably higher and broader than expected by markets at the start of the year,\u201d Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note to clients Monday, noting that the 90-day countdown \u201cshould keep uncertainty high for both investors and businesses.\u201d
The U.S.’s effective tariff rate would now be 17.8%, the highest since 1934, which Yale Budget Lab researchers estimated<\/a> Monday would dent households’ annual purchasing power by $2,800.
The United States has a larger goods trade deficit with China than with any other country, and Trump has often accused it of \u201cripping off\u201d the U.S. through unfair trade practices. Unlike other U.S. trading partners, Beijing responded by imposing retaliatory tariffs<\/a> and other countermeasures that escalated into a dizzying game of one-upmanship<\/a>.
The dueling import taxes were \u201cthe equivalent of an embargo,\u201d which neither side wanted, said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. \u201cWe do want trade, we want more balanced trade, and I think that both sides are committed to achieving that,\u201d he said.
Bessent, who represented the U.S. in the talks with Beijing along with Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, rejected suggestions that negotiating right away would have been more productive than triggering a tariff spat that caused global financial turmoil<\/a>, saying that a \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d effort to rebalance trade would not have worked.
The U.S. and China now have \u201ca mechanism to avoid the upward tariff pressure,\u201d Bessent told CNBC Monday. \u201cI would imagine that in the next few weeks we will be meeting again to get rolling on a more fulsome agreement,\u201d he added.
Greer noted that separate discussions on fentanyl were \u201con a very positive track.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry said the agreement was an \u201cimportant step\u201d and \u201ccreates favorable conditions for further narrowing differences and deepening cooperation.\u201d
\u201cIt is hoped that the U.S. will build on the foundation of this meeting, continue to work in the same direction with China\u201d and \u201ccompletely correct its unilateral tariff practices,\u201d a spokesperson said.
Bessent emphasized that the U.S. does not want a broad-based \u201cdecoupling\u201d from China, preferring instead a \u201cstrategic decoupling, because we realized during Covid that efficient supply chains were not secure supply chains,\u201d he told MSNBC. \u201cSo with steel, with semiconductors, with medicines, with a couple of other strategic categories, we are going to have to become self-reliant again.\u201d
Tariff impacts are already being felt across the United States, with shipping <\/a>v<\/a>o<\/a>lumes from China<\/a> falling sharply since early April. Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk said Monday that the 90-day reprieve was \u201ca step in the right direction\u201d that it hoped could \u201ccreate the long-term predictability our customers need.\u201d
The agreement is also good news for small and medium-sized businesses \u201con both sides of the Pacific,\u201d said Tianchen Xu, a Beijing-based economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a financial forecasting service. It should be \u201ca very big relief for struggling small Chinese exporters, some of which have already lost U.S. orders for weeks,\u201d while American buyers are gaining some breathing room over surging costs, he said in emailed comments.
The agreement exceeded expectations and has \u201crekindled global hope,\u201d said Wang Wen, dean of the\u00a0Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China. But Xu and Wang both cautioned that many difficult issues remain to be resolved.
\u201cThis situation is a major test of the political wisdom and negotiation capability of the decision-makers in both China and the U.S.,\u201d Wang said.
Ahead of the bilateral talks in Geneva, Trump had expressed willingness to slash tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 80%, saying that level \u201cseems right\u201d but leaving the decision to Bessent.
\u201cYou can\u2019t get any higher,\u201d Trump told reporters late last week. \u201cIt\u2019s at 145, so we know it\u2019s coming down.\u201d
Jennifer Jett is the Asia Digital Editor for NBC News, based in Hong Kong.
Peter Guo is\u00a0a fellow on NBC\u2019s Asia Desk, based in Hong Kong.
Rob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BREAKING: Stocks soar, with the Dow adding 1,140 points and S&P 500 rising 3.2% ProfileSectionsLocaltvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC News news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeHONG KONG \u2014 The United States and China announced a 90-day pause on most of their recent tariffs on each other, fueling hopes on Wall Street of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}