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(Bloomberg) — China has agreed to purchase at least $17 billion of agricultural products from the US annually through 2028, the White House said in a fact sheet detailing President Donald Trump’s two-day summit in China.
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A day earlier, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce released its own readout of the meeting, which said the US and China will adopt a series of measures, including mutually cutting levies on certain products. China did not provide specifics, adding that teams from both countries were still negotiating details, and the White House release was silent on tariffs.
Trump previously suggested that tariffs did not come up in his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“We didn’t discuss tariffs,” Trump told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One. “They’re paying substantial tariffs, but we didn’t discuss.”
Trump’s visit to Beijing was the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, and both leaders struck a positive tone on US-China relations.
Previous efforts by Trump to get China to purchase more US goods have fallen short, raising questions about whether the latest pledges will be fulfilled. China failed to meet its commitments under an agreement Trump brokered in 2020 to buy an extra $200 billion in US agricultural, energy and manufactured products over a two-year period. The Covid-19 pandemic complicated that effort but critics said the targets were unrealistic.
The $17 billion in annual Chinese purchases of agricultural products would be in addition to soybean-purchase commitments made last fall, the White House said.
China has recently turned to cheaper Brazilian soybeans after meeting an initial purchasing volume from the US agreed to in last year’s trade truce between Washington and Beijing.
In the wake of the summit, China restored market access for US beef by renewing the expired listings of more than 400 beef facilities, according to the White House. China will also work with US regulators to restore imports of American poultry.
Bloomberg reported prior to the summit that China had renewed beef import licenses. Beijing let hundreds of import authorizations for US meat exporters lapse amid Trump’s tariff war.
The outcome shows that both countries “can find solutions to the problems through dialog and cooperation,” China’s Commerce Ministry said on Saturday, noting the terms were discussed during trade talks in South Korea ahead of Xi’s meeting with Trump.
