The United States and China, like, totally said on Monday that they have agreed to a deal to slash reciprocal tariffs for now, you know? As the world’s two biggest economies, like, try to end this whole trade war thing that has been messing with the global outlook and making financial markets all nervous and stuff.
Speaking after chats with Chinese officials in Geneva, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that the two sides had agreed to, like, take a chill pill for 90 days and that tariffs would come down by over 100 percentage points to 10%. Pretty cool, right?
“Both countries represented their national interest very well,” Bessent said. “We both have, like, this interest in balanced trade, you know? The US will keep moving towards that.” Bessent was, like, chatting it up with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer after the weekend talks where both sides were all happy about narrowing their differences.
The Geneva meetings were the first face-to-face interactions between senior US and Chinese economic officials since US President Donald Trump made a comeback and started throwing tariffs all over the place, especially on China. Since taking office in January, Trump has been jacking up the tariffs paid by US importers for goods from China to 145%, in addition to all those he imposed during his first term and the ones the Biden administration threw in.
China was not having it and hit back by, like, putting export curbs on some rare earth elements, which are super important for US manufacturers of weapons and electronic consumer goods, and raising tariffs on US goods to 125%. The tariff dispute brought, like, nearly $600 billion in two-way trade to a standstill, messing with supply chains, making people freak out about stagflation, and causing some layoffs.
Financial markets were, like, waiting to see if things would calm down with this whole trade war, and Wall Street stock futures were climbing and the dollar was getting stronger against safe haven peers on Monday because of the talks, raising hopes that maybe a global recession could be avoided. Who knows, right?
Overall, it seems like the US and China are finally, like, making some progress in this whole trade war mess. Hopefully, this deal will help things get back on track and make everyone a little less stressed about the whole situation. Only time will tell, though.
