Trump says US has signed a deal with China on trade, without giving
details
[June 27, 2025] By
ELAINE KURTENBACH
BANGKOK (AP) — The U.S. and China have signed an agreement on trade,
President Donald Trump said, adding he expects to soon have a deal with
India.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg TV that the deal was
signed earlier this week. Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details
about the agreement.
“We just signed with China the other day,” Trump said late Thursday.
Lutnick said the deal was “signed and sealed” two days earlier.
It was unclear if the latest agreement was different from the one Trump
announced two weeks earlier that he said would make it easier for
American industries to obtain much-needed needed magnets and rare earth
minerals. That pact cleared the way for the trade talks to continue,
while the U.S. agreed to stop trying to revoke visas of Chinese
nationals on U.S. college campuses.
China’s Commerce Ministry said Friday that the two sides had “further
confirmed the details of the framework.” But its statement did not
explicitly mention U.S. access to rare earths, minerals used in
high-tech applications that have been at the center of the negotiations.
“China will approve the export applications of controlled items that
meet the conditions in accordance with the law. The United States will
cancel a series of restrictive measures taken against China accordingly.
It is hoped that the United States and China will meet each other
halfway,” it said.
The agreement follows initial talks in Geneva in early May that led both
sides to postpone massive tariff hikes that were threatening to freeze
much trade between the two countries. Later talks in London set a
framework for negotiations and the deal mentioned by Trump appeared to
formalize that agreement.
“The president likes to close these deals himself. He's the dealmaker.
We're going to have deal after deal,” Lutnick said.
China has not announced any new agreements, but it announced earlier
this week that it was speeding up approvals of exports of rare earths,
materials used in high-tech products such as electric vehicles.
Beijing's limits on exports of rare earths have been a key point of
contention.
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 The Chinese Commerce Ministry said
Thursday that Beijing was accelerating review of export license
applications for rare earths and had approved “a certain number of
compliant applications."
Export controls of the minerals apparently eclipsed
tariffs in the latest round of trade negotiations between Beijing
and Washington after China imposed permitting requirements on seven
rare earth elements in April, threatening to disrupt production of
cars, robots, wind turbines and other high-tech products in the U.S.
and around the world.
China also has taken steps recently on the fentanyl issue,
announcing last week that it would designate two more substances as
precursor chemicals for fentanyl, making them subject to production,
transport and export regulations. Trump has demanded that Beijing do
more to stop the flow of such precursor ingredients to Mexican drug
cartels, which use them to make fentanyl for sale in the U.S. He
imposed 20% tariffs on Chinese imports over the fentanyl issue, the
biggest part of current 30% across-the-board taxes on Chinese goods.
The agreement struck in May in Geneva called for both sides to scale
back punitive tariff hikes imposed as Trump escalated his trade war
and sharply raised import duties. Some higher tariffs, such as those
imposed by Washington related to the trade in fentanyl and duties on
aluminum and steel, remain in place.
The rapidly shifting policies are taking a toll on both of the
world's two largest economies.
The U.S. economy contracted at a 0.5% annual pace from January
through March, partly because imports surged as companies and
households rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose
tariffs on them.
In China, factory profits sank more than 9% from a year earlier in
May, with automakers suffering a large share of that drop. They fell
more than 1% year-on-year in January-May.
Trump and other U.S. officials have indicated they expect to reach
trade deals with many other countries, including India.
“We're going to have deal after deal after deal,” Lutnick said.
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