Lily Kuo and David Pierson
By withholding soybean purchases and rare-earth exports, China extracted relief from U.S. tariffs and delayed export controls, without conceding much in return.
President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, after talks on Thursday ended. Mr. Xi said to Mr. Trump that both sides should avoid falling into a “vicious cycle of mutual retaliation.”Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
Lily Kuo reported from Taipei, Taiwan. David Pierson reported from Busan, where China’s leader Xi Jinping and President Trump met at an airport.
When Xi Jinping walked out of his meeting with President Trump on Thursday, he projected the confidence of a powerful leader who could make Washington blink.
The outcome of the talks suggested that he succeeded.
By flexing China’s near monopoly on rare earths and its purchasing power over U.S. soybeans, Mr. Xi won key concessions from Washington — a reduction in tariffs, a suspension of port fees on Chinese ships and the delay of U.S. export controls that would have barred more Chinese firms from access to American technology. Both sides also agreed to extend a truce struck earlier this year to limit tariffs.
“What’s clear is they have become increasingly bold in exerting leverage and they are happy to pocket any and all U.S. concessions,” said Julian Gewirtz, who was a senior China policy official at the White House and the State Department in President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration.
Sounding almost as if he were delivering a lecture, Mr. Xi said to Mr. Trump that the “recent twists and turns” of the trade war should be instructive to them both, according to a Chinese government summary of Mr. Xi’s remarks at the meeting in Busan, South Korea.
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