At the request of the AFP news agency, a US government official said that “an additional agreement on a framework for the implementation of the Geneva Agreement had been made”. In May negotiations in Switzerland, negotiators from Beijing and Washington agreed to initially complain very high mutual tariffs in order to enable further discussions.
Negotiations in London followed at the beginning of June, at the end of which there was a fundamental cleaning in the trade and customs conflict. At that time, the two sides did not provide any further information. For the United States, it is particularly about access to rare earths. China is the world market leader, especially in the processing of metals, which are essential for a number of technologies and had introduced export restrictions in the course of the trade conflict.
The US official said that the agreement now made also affects the deliveries of rare earths to the USA. A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce in turn said that the United States “would abolish a number of restrictive measures against China”. Beijing hopes “that the United States and China will meet halfway”.
The most important indices on the New York stock exchange reacted on Friday with price gains. The S&P 500 share index, which includes the largest listed US companies, recorded a record high. Around 10.15 a.m. (local time, 4:15 p.m. CEST), the index was 0.6 percent in the increase of 6177 points. The Dow Jones increased by 0.7 percent, the technology -based Nasdaq won 0.6 percent.
Since Trump’s took office in January, the trade dispute between the two largest economies in the world has escalated. China reacted to Trump’s hard customs policy compared to the US trading partners with their own counter-tariffs, whereupon the US President increased the surcharges. Chinese export restrictions for rare earths were generally considered retaliation as part of the trade conflict.
