US Treasury Chief Scott Bessent was part of a US negotiating team that arrived at Rosenbad, the Swedish prime minister’s office in central Stockholm, in the early afternoon. China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng was also seen at the venue on video footage. China is facing an August 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with President Donald Trump‘s administration, after Beijing and Washington reached preliminary deals in May and June to end weeks of escalating tit-for-tat tariffs and a cut-off of rare earth minerals.
Trump touched on the talks during a wide-ranging press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland. “I’d love to see China open up their country. So we’re dealing with China right now as we speak,” Trump said.
Without an agreement, global supply chains could face renewed turmoil from US duties snapping back to triple-digit levels that would amount to a bilateral trade embargo.
XI-TRUMP MEETING?
Trade analysts said another 90-day extension of a tariff and export control truce struck in mid-May between China and the United States was likely. An extension would facilitate planning for a potential meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in late October or early November. The Financial Times reported on Monday that the U.S. had paused curbs on tech exports to China to avoid disrupting trade talks with Beijing and support Trump’s efforts to secure a meeting with Xi this year.
Meanwhile, in Washington, U.S. senators from both major parties plan to introduce bills this week targeting China over its treatment of minority groups, dissidents, and Taiwan, emphasizing security and human rights, which could complicate talks in Stockholm. Previous US-China trade talks in Geneva and London in May and June focused on bringing US and Chinese retaliatory tariffs down from triple-digit levels and restoring the flow of rare earth minerals halted by China and Nvidia’s H20 AI chips, and other goods halted by the United States.
