The United States and China have agreed to a “framework” that is intended to ease economic tension and extend a trade truce that the world’s two largest economies reached last month, officials from both countries said on Tuesday.
After two days of marathon negotiations in London, top economic officials from the United States and China are now expected to present the new framework to their leaders, President Trump and President Xi Jinping, for final approval.
The agreement is intended to solidify terms of a deal that the United States and China reached in Switzerland in May that unraveled in recent weeks. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary who was part of the negotiating team, said that American concerns over China’s restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals and magnets had been resolved.
“We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus,” Mr. Lutnick told reporters in London, describing the agreement as a “handshake.”
He added that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi would be briefed on the agreement before it took effect.
“They were focused on trying to deliver on what President Xi told President Trump,” Mr. Lutnick said. “I think both sides had extra impetus to get things done.”
The U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, who took part in the discussions, said they were also focused on ensuring compliance with what was agreed in Geneva about rare earth mineral exports and tariffs. He said the two sides would continue to be in regular contact as they tried to work through their economic disagreements.
The 90-day pause on some tariffs that was reached in Geneva is scheduled to expire in August. Mr. Greer said that it would be up to Mr. Trump to decide if that would be extended as additional negotiations proceed.
China’s vice commerce minister, Li Chenggang, said that the talks were professional, reasonable, substantive and candid, according to Chinese state media.
China’s official Xinhua news agency issued a cautious statement, saying that the two sides had agreed “in principle” — a term used by state media and diplomats to indicate that details have not been worked out. According to Xinhua, the discussions were “professional, rational, in-depth and candid.” Chinese state media often uses the term “candid” when there have been considerable disagreements.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had led the American delegation, departed the talks late Tuesday to return to Washington for congressional hearings on Wednesday. On the Chinese side, the negotiations were led by He Lifeng, the vice premier in charge of economic policy.
The two sides were seeking a resolution to painful economic measures they had imposed on each other in recent months. After Mr. Trump ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese goods in April, Beijing clamped down on exports of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to shut down operations by American manufacturers, defense contractors and others.
In a meeting in Geneva last month, U.S. and Chinese officials agreed to roll back tariffs and other retaliatory measures. But Trump administration officials were dismayed when Chinese shipments of the rare earth minerals, and the magnets made with them, remained infrequent, and they accused China of violating its agreement in Geneva.
U.S. officials responded by clamping down on exports of American products and technology to China, including software for making semiconductors, gases like ethane and butane, and nuclear and aerospace components. U.S. officials also proposed barring Chinese students from enrolling in the United States.
The Chinese government denied that its rare earth measures were targeted at the United States, and said American officials were the ones who had broken the agreement made in Geneva.
It remains unclear whether the latest framework will hold, and analysts remained skeptical that a broader pact was imminent.
“Two days of negotiations are better than none, but frankly, we’ve seen these extended negotiations in the past,” Henrietta Treyz, director of economic policy at Veda Partners, wrote in a research note. “There’s a lot of time spent translating, confirming meaning and reiterating framing that goes on in these negotiations that make them time consuming but ultimately keep a lot of the status quo, which appears to be what’s come out of London.”
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting.
