What to know about trade negotiations between the economic giants

Top White House officials alluded to a trade agreement with China on Sunday after representatives from the two countries held talks in Switzerland over the weekend.

In remarks to reporters in Geneva, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer struck an optimistic tone regarding the state of a potential trade agreement with China, noting that the administration would provide additional details on Monday.

“I’m happy to report that we made substantial progress between the United States and China in the very important trade talks,” Bessent told reporters, adding that “the talks were productive.”

Greer appeared to reference an agreement between the two sides as he touted the talks as constructive.

“This was, as the secretary pointed out, a very constructive two days,” Greer said. “It’s important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as maybe thought. That being said, there was a lot of groundwork that went into these two days.”

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Heading into the weekend, White House officials indicated they were eager to negotiate, even as they insisted the U.S. would not unilaterally lower the duties without concessions from the Chinese. 

“I think we’re going to have a good weekend with China,” Trump said during Thursday’s presentation of a preliminary U.K. trade agreement.

“De-escalating, bringing those rates down to where they could, where they should be, I think it’s Scott Bessent’s goal,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Friday, referring to the treasury secretary. “And that’s what the president hopes is a good outcome; it’s a de-escalating world where we go back to each other and then we work on a big deal together.”

While Trump has attempted to soften the aggressive posture he demonstrated during his “Liberation Day” speech last month, critics say the new approach has instead been marked by uncertainty and half-measures. Analysts with the Capital Economics consultancy pointed to the preliminary agreement announced by the U.S. and the U.K. on Thursday as evidence of “Trump’s desperation to show progress on trade.”

“The ‘full and comprehensive’ trade deal between the US and the UK announced in a rush today by President Donald Trump and PM Keir Starmer is no such thing,” the analysts wrote in a note to clients shortly after the agreement was announced. “As Trump admitted in his press conference, the ‘final details’ still need to be ‘written up in the coming weeks.’”

The dizzying trend continued Friday, when Trump posted on social media that reducing tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 80% “seems right,” only to have White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt say later in the day that the figure was simply one the president “threw out there.”

Bessent has previously characterized Trump’s approach as “strategic uncertainty.”

And in a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump called the agreement with the U.K. “AMAZING for both Countries,” saying the parent of British Airways had ordered $10 billion worth of new Boeing planes, though officials with the airline’s parent company, IAG, have said the order did not come about as a result of the trade negotiations.

“We’re going to make a fortune with Tariffs, only smart people understand that,” Trump wrote.

The U.S. tariff rate on China climbed to 145% last month, after the president signed an executive order imposing 125% duties on all imports from that nation on top of 20% duties imposed at the outset of his second term in response to China’s alleged inaction on fentanyl flows.

China, in turn, responded with 125% duties on imports from the U.S. while sharply condemning the Trump administration’s tariff actions and saying it would no longer engage in retaliatory increases.

China may have already found a way to get around the 145% duties. On Friday, it released data that showed its exports had climbed 8.1% year over year in April amid a surge in shipments to other Southeast Asian nations. That’s an indication that China may simply be using a trans-shipment strategy to circumvent the duties, experts told CNBC.

It is too soon to say whether fears of shortages on U.S. shelves will come to fruition, but the logistics group Flexport reported last week that Pacific Ocean carriers were withdrawing capacity “at faster rates than COVID” in anticipation of reduced demand.