US and Chinese officials agreed to seek an extension of their 90-day tariff truce yesterday, following two days of talks in Stockholm aimed at defusing an escalating trade war between the world’s two biggest economies that threatens global growth.
No major breakthroughs were announced, and US officials said it was up to President Donald Trump to decide whether to extend a trade truce that expires on August 12 or potentially let tariffs shoot back up to triple-digit figures.
After months of threatening high tariffs on trading partners, Trump has secured trade deals with the European Union, Japan, and others, but China’s powerhouse economy and grip on global rare earth flows make these talks particularly complex.
Both sides in May walked back from imposing triple-digit tariffs on each other in what would have amounted to a bilateral trade embargo. But global supply chains and financial markets could face renewed turmoil without an agreement.
Trump will have the final say on whether to prolong a truce, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters.
Another 90-day extension is one option, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer added.
“We’ll report back to him the process we had here. We had constructive meetings for sure, to go back with the positive report. But the extension of the pause, he’ll decide,” Greer said after talks at Rosenbad, the Swedish prime minister’s office in central Stockholm.
Bessent said there would likely be another meeting between US and Chinese officials in about 90 days, and the agreements on the flow of Chinese rare earths were becoming more refined after previous talks in Geneva and London.
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