US President Donald Trump has said that he agreed to reduce tariffs on China in exchange for Beijing cracking down on the illicit fentanyl trade, resuming US soybean purchases and maintaining the flow of rare earth minerals.
The statement came after face-to-face talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the South Korean city of Busan, their first meeting since 2019, marked the finale of a whirlwind Asia trip on which he also touted trade breakthroughs with South Korea and Japan.
"It was an amazing meeting," President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after he left South Korea, ranking the talks a "12 out of 10".
He said that taxes on Chinese imports would be cut from 57% to 47%, by halving to 10% the rate of tariffs related to trade in fentanyl precursor drugs.
President Xi will work "very hard to stop the flow" of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid that is the leading cause of American overdose deaths, Mr Trump said.
China agreed to pause export controls announced earlier this month on rare earths, elements with vital roles in cars, planes and weapons that have become Beijing's most potent source of leverage in its trade war with the United States.
The suspension would last for a year, the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement.
It added that the two sides had also reached consensus on expanding agricultural trade and would work to resolve issues around TikTok, an app that President Trump wants to bring under US-controlled ownership.
His meeting with Mr Xi followed a summit with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, where the two allies said they had finalised most details on a tariff deal they had been wrangling over for months.
The reaction to the US-China agreement was muted on global stock markets.
US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, in a post on social media, said that President Trump's statements on the summit should not be believed. "Trump folded on China," he wrote.
Among major trading partners with Washington, only Brazil and India are still subject to higher tariffs.
In the run-up to the meeting, stock markets from Wall Street to Tokyo had hit records on hopes of a breakthrough in a trade war between the world's two largest economies that has disrupted supply chains and rocked global business confidence.
Mr Trump repeatedly talked up prospects of reaching agreement with President Xi since US negotiators on Sunday said they had agreed a framework with China to avoid 100% US tariffs on its goods and defer China's export curbs on rare earth minerals.
The cordial meeting between the leaders, at a South Korean air base on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, lasted more than one-and-a-half hours.
It was normal for the two sides to have frictions now and then, Mr Xi told President Trump via a translator, as they faced each other, flanked by their delegations.
"China's development and rejuvenation are not incompatible with President Trump's goal of 'Making America Great Again,'" he added.
They also agreed to pause tit-for-tat port fees, designed to thwart dominance in shipbuilding, ocean freight and logistics.
China will begin the process of purchasing US energy, Mr Trump said in a post on Truth Social, hinting at a deal in Alaska where his administration has been touting a proposed $44 billion (€38bn) liquified natural gas (LNG) export project.
The US leader said that he would travel to China in April before he receives Mr Xi in the United States.
Chinese state media portrayed the meeting as a triumph of its president's policy making.
"We have the confidence and capability to navigate all kinds of risks and challenges," the official news agency, Xinhua, quoted him as saying.
The agreement broadly returns ties to their status before President Trump's "Liberation Day" offensive in April triggered tit-for-tat escalation.
But it may be no more than a fragile truce in a trade war with root causes still unresolved, analysts say.
Mr Trump said he did not discuss Nvidia's state-of-the-art Blackwell chip with President Xi, in a further blow to the firm's hopes of maintaining its presence in China's $50 billion (€43bn) artificial intelligence market.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, who arrived in South Korea shortly after Mr Trump departed, said he was confident that the two leaders had a good conversation and would protect their countries' interests.
The contentious issue of Taiwan, the democratic island claimed by China that is a US partner and high-tech powerhouse, also did not surface in the talks, the US president said.
It "never came up. That was not discussed actually," he told reporters.
Taiwan's top trade negotiator said that she had met a senior American trade official on the sidelines of the APEC summit, but could not provide any details of what they discussed.
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Minutes before the start of the meeting with President Xi, Mr Trump ordered the US military to resume testing nuclear weapons after a gap of 33 years, pointing to the growing arsenals of Russia and China.
China's foreign ministry said it hoped that Washington would stick to a moratorium on nuclear testing.
President Trump's hopes of a re-run of his 2019 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the border with South Korea did not materialise.
He said that he had been too "busy" to meet Mr Kim during his visit, but he could return.
"I had a great relationship with Kim Jong Un," he added.
Mr Trump said that they would meet in the "not too distant future" and he would like to "straighten out" tensions between North and South Korea.
He hailed the military alliance with South Korea as "stronger than ever" and said he had given the green light for Seoul to build a nuclear-powered submarine.
