Trump Says US Reached Tariff, Rare Earth Deals With China After Xi Meeting

 The U.S. president said he will visit China in April 2026. 

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping hold a bilateral meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30, 2025. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

GYEONGJU, South Korea—U.S. President Donald Trump announced a series of trade deals Thursday after a meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and said he agreed to reduce tariffs on China in exchange for other economic concessions.

“I thought it was an amazing meeting,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after he departed Busan, South Korea, following the nearly two-hour-long meeting with Xi.

“It was a good meeting for two very large, powerful countries, and that’s the way we should get along

Tariffs will drop 10 percent—which brings levies on Chinese imports to 47 percent—with Beijing agreeing to resume purchasing soybeans from American farmers, allow for the export of rare earth metals, and mitigate the flow of dangerous fentanyl precursors.

Trump imposed tariffs against China in January to incentivize Beijing to proactively regulate fentanyl, its precursors, and similar analog substances.

The president has repeatedly accused Chinese businesses of profiting from the death of Americans and contributing to the sharp increase in opioid deaths around the world in recent years

“I believe he’s going to work very hard to stop the death that’s coming in,” Trump said.

“President Xi, I think, was very strong in saying he was going to enforce those laws internally. And of course, we’ll watch that.

The two leaders met at South Korea’s Gimhae Air Base at approximately 11:15 a.m. local time for the bilateral discussion—the first time Trump and Xi have met in person since Trump returned to the White House in January. Their last meeting was in Osaka, Japan, in 2019, when both attended the G20 summit.

The meeting, which took place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, lasted nearly two hours.

American and Chinese trade negotiators worked together over recent weeks to develop a framework—announcing Oct. 26 they expected a favorable meeting between Trump and Xi—for the agreements discussed Thursday.

The U.S. president highlighted the progress made during the two leaders’ discussions.

“A lot of decisions were made. There wasn’t too, too much left out there,” Trump said. “We’ve come to a conclusion on many, very important points.”

An ‘Everything’ Deal

Trump celebrated the negotiations and said the rare earths deal is monumental for the United States and other nations around the world.

In advance of the agreement, the U.S. president rescinded the pending 100 percent tariffs on China for November that were meant as punitive measures for Beijing’s restrictive export controls on rare earths and critical minerals.

The terms of the agreement, yet to be released, are set for renegotiation yearly, according to the president.

“I think the deal will go on for a long time, long beyond the year,” Trump said.

Commenting on U.S.-China tensions, Xi said the two countries should forge a path built on partnership instead of adversity.

A myriad of issues were on the table as the two leaders discussed tariffs, fentanyl, global supply chains, Indo-Pacific security, and political prisoners, among other topics.

An official statement from the Chinese Communist Party following the two leaders’ meeting suggested that more negotiations are needed to finalize the details of the proposed agreements.

Trump said he will visit China in April 2026

Xi is expected to travel to the United States sometime next year. Though details are uncertain, Trump said the meeting could take place at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, or the White House.

Chinese spokespersons called the high-level relationship between Trump and Xi “irreplaceable” in strategic relations between the two countries.

Trump raised a long list of issues with Xi, noting after the talks that he expects cooperation and concessions from Beijing on several of them.

The United States and China had imposed tit-for-tat tariffs reaching triple digits on each other back in April amid escalating tensions. Numerous pauses and readjustments from both sides subsequently opened the door for the recent negotiations.

Beijing is expected to hold off on its latest rare-earth export controls for about a year as it reviews the rule, while Trump is accelerating diversification of the U.S. supply chain.

A long-stated priority, the U.S. president also signed rare-earth agreements with Thailand, Japan, and Malaysia in the past few days as part of his Asia tour.

Also high on the list of those standing to gain from the trade deals are American farmers, whom Trump previously said Beijing had been trying to use as “leverage.”

China is the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, purchasing more than every other buyer combined. This year, amid a record harvest, China boycotted U.S. soybeans and purchased its fill from Brazil and Argentina instead, leaving American soybean farmers in the lurch.

With months to go until spoilage negatively affects American farmers, Trump said China has agreed to start importing U.S. soybeans, sorghum, and other crops.

“Our Farmers will be very happy!” Trump said in an Oct. 30 post on Truth Social. “In fact, as I said once before during my first Administration, Farmers should immediately go out and buy more land and larger tractors.”

Prior to the meeting, farmers’ associations appealed to Trump while Chinese officials urged U.S. farmers to lobby the president to reduce tariffs. Trump has also said he would use tariff revenue to bail out the farmers in the short term.

Trump has previously said he wants China to “quadruple” its purchases of U.S. soybeans.

While some other nations have signed trade deals that allow them to effectively “buy down” their trade deficits with the United States through multibillion-dollar investments rather than purchases of U.S. goods, national security concerns are likely to prevent Beijing from doing the same.

Trump previously said he expects a “deal on everything” rather than a traditional trade deal, though details from the latest meeting suggest the agreements could materialize in various parts. He announced a prospective energy deal hours after the meeting, saying Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum are working to finalize an agreement that would see China make a “very large scale transaction” of oil and gas from Alaska.

Beijing is also expected to curb exports of fentanyl precursor chemicals and do its part in cracking down on drug trafficking that is causing a crisis in the United States, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Oct. 28. Trump had said he expects to announce a reduction of the 20 percent fentanyl-related tariff imposed by Washington on China if Beijing agrees to cooperate on this issue.

Trump also brought up the Russia–Ukraine war, noting that China and the United States have no stake in the conflict, while calling on Beijing to curb purchases of Russian oil and gas

It is unclear if discussions included Taiwan or the release of political prisoner Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul who has been imprisoned since 2020.

Nvidia Valuation Skyrockets

Semiconductor chips were a key topic of negotiations, according to the president. China is interested in buying more high-tech hardware, but the terms of any deal would be negotiated by Nvidia, he said.

“We’re sort of the arbitrator or the referee,” Trump said.

He told reporters Oct. 29 ahead of the talks that the flagship Blackwell AI “super-duper chip” was something he may speak to Xi about, sending shares rallying. Nvidia on Wednesday became the first company to reach a market value of $5 trillion.

After the meeting, he told reporters that discussions included other chips, but not the Blackwell version.

Nvidia chip sales to China have been thrown for a loop amid this year’s trade war. The Trump administration initially planned to further restrict sales of Nvidia chips to China, but reversed course after Trump spoke with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

However, Beijing expressed suspicion about the reversal, citing security concerns about “backdoors” and location tracking, and summoned Nvidia to provide information and assurances. Nvidia denied the existence of backdoors. The company did not disclose what information Beijing was seeking.

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities and associations urged Chinese companies to use domestic chips instead of foreign purchases. Huang said at Nvidia’s developers’ event on Oct. 29 that he hasn’t applied for export licenses to China as a result.

“They’ve made it very clear that they don’t want Nvidia to be there right now,” he said of China.

Huang, who on Tuesday announced $500 billion in AI chip orders and plans to build seven supercomputers for the U.S. government, is also expected to meet with Trump on Oct. 29.

“When I go, hopefully we‘ll have some announcements that will be really, really delightful to the people of Korea and really delightful to President Trump, but I’ll save it for a few more days,” Huang told reporters ahead of the South Korea trip.

Competition Intensifies

Both the United States and China are also trying to project power through diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific.

Trump, U.S. officials, and their foreign counterparts have underscored the prominence of American leadership in the Indo-Pacific as the Asian nations look to the United States for security.

In addition to the trade deals, Trump signed agreements that would boost cooperation to combat transnational crime, allow for joint military drills, and increase collaboration and investments in cutting-edge technology.

Chinese officials have, meanwhile, urged nations to push back against U.S. tariffs.

Xi will remain in South Korea until Nov. 1 to attend the APEC summit and hold a bilateral meeting with Lee.

China will host the APEC summit and the G20 in 2026.