What Trump and Xi did and did not agree upon in their meeting

From fentanyl to rare earths, President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the final leg of his three-country tour of Asia saw the world’s two largest economies ease their trade tensions, or at least some of them.

“A lot of finalizing,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One after leaving Busan, South Korea, where he met with Xi for about an hour and 40 minutes on Thursday, saying he would rate the “incredible” meeting a “12” on a scale of zero to 10.

Although the two leaders have not signed a finalized agreement, Trump said a deal could be signed “very soon” and that there were “not too many major stumbling blocks.”

Trump said he would visit China in April and that Xi would visit Florida or Washington “sometime after that.”

Here are the key takeaways from the summit:

Fentanyl

Trump said he would reduce fentanyl tariffs on China from 20% to 10%, effective immediately. He said this would bring the total effective tariff rate on Chinese imports from 57% to 47%.

Trump said he hoped Xi would “work very hard” to stop the illicit flow of fentanyl precursors, the chemicals used to make the deadly opioid, from China to other countries. “I think you’re going to see a big difference,” he said.

U.S. officials say China has not done enough to stop the illegal export of the precursor ingredients, which are processed into fentanyl in Mexican labs and then smuggled into the United States.

China has rejected the accusations, calling its anti-fentanyl efforts “the fiercest” in the world.

Rare earth materials

A key topic in trade negotiations between the United States and China concerns rare earth materials, which are crucial for making magnets used in everything from turbines to electric vehicles.

China, which has a near monopoly on global supplies, rattled automakers around the world by imposing strict export controls on the materials, saying it was trying to stifle their military use and has since used them as a powerful bargaining chip in trade negotiations.

Trump said Xi had agreed to a one-year reprieve on restrictions that would likely be “systematically extended.”

“All the rare earths have been colonized, and that’s for the world,” he said. A White House official alongside Trump said the president and Xi had reached an “understanding” and that China “would not impose the controls on rare earths that they have proposed.”

Analysts say that while the United States is working to reduce its reliance on China for materials — with Trump signing critical minerals deals with Thailand, Malaysia and Japan during this trip — it will be some time before that happens.

“Building new mines and, in particular, expanding processing capacity – which is the real bottleneck – requires years of sustained effort and substantial investment,” Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish National China Center at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, told NBC News.

Soy

Trump said China, which resumed purchases of U.S. soybeans before the meeting after boycotting them for months, would buy “large, enormous quantities of soybeans and other agricultural products.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China would buy 12 million tons of soybeans from the United States by January as part of an agreement to purchase 25 million tons per year for three years.

The halt in purchases from China, the largest market for U.S. soybeans, has been a major problem for U.S. farmers, who have pressured the Trump administration to resolve the problem.

China has not purchased U.S. soybeans since May, instead sourcing from South American countries like Argentina and Brazil.

“Our large soybean producers, who the Chinese have used as political pawns, are no longer on the table and they are expected to thrive in the years to come,” Bessent said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.”

Ukraine

Trump has long pledged to end the war in Ukraine, but after facing resistance from Russia, he turned to the Kremlin’s close partners for help: India and China.

The United States and China will “work together” to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, Trump said, adding: “Ukraine has been very present, we’ve talked about it for a long time. »

“We’re both going to work together to see if we can do something,” he said.

Taiwan and Nvidia

As for the American artificial intelligence giant Nvidia, which on Wednesday became first company to be worth $5 trillion, Trump said there was no discussion about whether the United States would further ease its export restrictions to allow the export of Nvidia’s latest chips, called Blackwell.

“We’re not talking about Blackwell chips,” Trump said.

The United States is currently allowing limited exports of the older H20 GPU chips, which are a modified version designed specifically for the Chinese market.

TikTok

Trump did not address the proposed US-China TikTok deal after the meeting, but it appears China approved it during Trump’s Asia trip.

Under a U.S. law passed last year for national security reasons, the popular Chinese app must sell its U.S. operations to an American owner.

Earlier in the week, Bessent said a TikTok deal could be finalized during Trump’s meeting with Xi. After the meeting, Bessent told Fox Business Network that China had approved a deal during negotiations in Kuala Lumpur and that further finalizations of the deal would take place over the coming weeks and months.

After the meeting, China’s Commerce Ministry spokesperson said in a statement that the country had agreed “to work with the United States to properly resolve issues related to TikTok,” according to a translation.