Behind talks to cut tariffs on $30 billion in goods: power asymmetry and the countdown to a US-China truce deadline

A critical point in the US-China trade war is approaching rapidly. Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson Huang Ling said on Thursday that negotiators from the two countries were working to implement reciprocal tariff cuts on $30 billion worth of goods by an “early date.” According to The Hindu, the statement has raised expectations for the two leaders’ meeting in Washington in two weeks.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet in Washington on September 24, their third face-to-face meeting in the past year. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said the same day that “head-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance for China-US relations.” The formulation highlights Beijing’s view of the importance of direct intervention by the leaders to stabilize the competitive relationship between the world’s two largest economies.

But the contest did not begin on equal terms. An earlier understanding reached in Beijing in May — establishing a US-China trade council to manage bilateral commerce and a parallel investment council — followed a truce in what was described as an “intense tariff war.” Trump had pushed tariffs on Chinese imports to extremely high levels, and China responded in kind. The problem is that the truce mechanism itself was created after one side initiated unilateral tariff increases, structurally reflecting the agenda-setting power of the initiator.

Huang Ling provided no further details about the products covered by the reciprocal reductions or the timetable for implementation. The Hindu cited a Barclays research note on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting, which said trade would be the summit’s “central issue.” The bank also warned that there was limited room for a broad trade agreement and that “targeted tariff reductions are more likely.” The tariff truce previously reached by the two countries expires on November 10, adding urgency to the negotiations.

According to the report, negotiations on reciprocal tariff reductions are a central part of the work to create the trade council. Their purpose is to identify and cut tariffs on equal amounts of “non-sensitive” goods from both sides. The design of the framework itself reveals the power imbalance: who will decide which products count as “sensitive”? When one party can first raise tariffs to extreme levels and then “trade” reductions through negotiations, the substance of so-called reciprocity is a return to a higher baseline set by that party.

The Hindu also reported that Trump was moving toward imposing new tariffs over allegations that China was “flooding the market with cheap goods.” The move comes at a critical moment in the truce talks and shows that beneath the stabilizing appearance of leader-level diplomacy, instruments of unilateral pressure remain active. Whether the Trump-Xi meeting can produce a substantive agreement strong enough to prevent another tariff escalation before the truce expires on November 10 remains uncertain.