Trump says US has signed a deal with China on trade, without giving details
BANGKOK (AP) — The U.S. and China have signed an agreement on trade, President Donald Trump said, adding he expects to soon have a deal with India.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg TV that the deal was signed earlier this week. Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details about the agreement.
'We just signed with China the other day,' Trump said late Thursday.
Lutnick said the deal was 'signed and sealed' two days earlier.
It follows initial talks in Geneva in early May that led both sides to postpone massive tariff hikes that were threatening to freeze much trade between the two countries. Later talks in London set a framework for negotiations and the deal mentioned by Trump appeared to formalize that agreement.
'The president likes to close these deals himself. He's the dealmaker. We're going to have deal after deal,' Lutnick said.
China has not announced any new agreements, but it announced earlier this week that it was speeding up approvals of exports of rare earths, materials used in high-tech products such as electric vehicles. Beijing's limits on exports of rare earths have been a key point of contention.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry said Thursday that Beijing was accelerating review of export license applications for rare earths and had approved 'a certain number of compliant applications.'
Export controls of the minerals apparently eclipsed tariffs in the latest round of trade negotiations between Beijing and Washington after China imposed permitting requirements on seven rare earth elements in April, threatening to disrupt production of cars, robots, wind turbines and other high-tech products in the U.S. and around the world.
The agreement struck in May in Geneva called for both sides to scale back punitive tariff hikes imposed as Trump escalated his trade war and sharply raised import duties. Some higher tariffs, such as those imposed by Washington related to the trade in fentanyl and duties on aluminum and steel, remain in place.
The rapidly shifting policies are taking a toll on both of the world's two largest economies.
The U.S. economy contracted at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March, partly because imports surged as companies and households rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them.
In China, factory profits sank more than 9% from a year earlier in May, with automakers suffering a large share of that drop. They fell more than 1% year-on-year in January-May.
Trump and other U.S. officials have indicated they expect to reach trade deals with many other countries, including India.
'We're going to have deal after deal after deal,' Lutnick said.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
14 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump is losing support among independent voters. Who are they?
We'll have to wait and see exactly what the American bombing raid on Iranian nuclear sites accomplished and how far it set back the country's nuclear ambitions. The White House and Pentagon have launched a concerted effort to convince Americans the mission was successful and needed. At a Pentagon news conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine went into great detail to explain the years of planning that underpinned readiness for the attack and how it was executed. Details like those Caine shared could help sway public opinion and bring Americans behind strikes. But the early assessment of how the public views the strikes is probably not what the administration was hoping for. A majority, 56%, disapproved of the strikes in a CNN poll released this week, before conflicting assessments of the mission's success. The results in CNN's poll fall along predictable ideological lines. Democrats will pretty much always disapprove of what the Trump administration does, and Republicans will pretty much always approve. Here's how CNN's polling team put it in their report: Majorities of independents (60%) and Democrats (88%) disapprove of the decision to take military action in Iran. Republicans largely approve (82%). But just 44% of Republicans strongly approve of the airstrikes, far smaller than the group of Democrats who strongly disapprove (60%), perhaps reflecting that some in Trump's coalition are broadly distrustful of military action abroad. It's an obvious rule of US politics that independent voters are generally the ones who might, as their opinions shift sway, tilt power in the country. And on a range of issues, they have been turning against Trump. CNN's Aaron Blake looked last week at numerous polls on Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill. 'Independents opposed the bill by around a 3-to-1 margin … The KFF and Fox News polls – the ones with the fewest undecideds – showed 7 in 10 independents opposed it,' Blake wrote. On what may be Trump's signature issue, deportations and immigration policy, CNN's polling editor Ariel Edwards-Levy wrote about a CNN poll in April, 'more than half of independents now say they have no real confidence in him to deal with the topic, with 56% now saying he has gone too far on deportations.' On tariffs, the economy and government cuts, Trump has failed, at least so far, to convince Americans who don't identify with either party, that his agenda is the right thing to do. I went to CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enten, who has been tracking this trend for some time. 'It's pretty clear that independents and independent voters have turned against Trump,' he told me. Back in April, Enten's analysis said that Trump had the worst approval rating on record with independents at that point in a presidency. 'His issue is he has completely lost the center of the electorate,' Enten said, offering two very obvious and simple reasons why. Independents don't like what Trump is doing on the economy. They don't seem to like the bulk of his agenda otherwise (see the 'Big, Beautiful Bill'). This will present major problems for Trump and the GOP going forward. 'Now, it's possible that Trump and the GOP can do well going forward without independents breaking overwhelmingly for them,' Enten said, pointing out that independents broke for Trump in 2024. 'The problem is you can't be losing independents 20+ points and survive in American politics,' he added. At the same time, independents are hard to track for a variety of reasons. Unlike Republicans and Democrats, they don't act as a unified voting bloc, as Edwards-Levy and CNN's Jennifer Agiesta wrote a few years ago. 'Plenty of independents are in fact partisan and they're certainly not de facto moderates,' Edwards-Levy told me. What do independents have in common? 'They're less strongly tethered to particular partisan loyalties and less likely to be closely engaged with politics, all of which makes their views potentially more malleable than those of stronger partisans,' Edwards-Levy said. In a recent Washington Post poll about the Trump's agenda bill, for instance, only 18% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans said they hadn't heard anything about the controversial proposal to extend Trump's first-term tax cuts, create new tax cuts and slash spending, including on Medicaid. It was a much larger portion of independents, 34%, who hadn't heard anything at all about the president's top legislative priority.
San Francisco Chronicle
15 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Van Nistelrooy out as coach of relegated Leicester
LONDON (AP) — Ruud van Nistelrooy has agreed to terminate his contract as coach of Leicester, the English club said Friday. The former Netherlands striker took over Leicester in November last year on a contract through June 2027, but he couldn't prevent relegation as the team finished the Premier League in 18th place. The club said it is looking for his replacement. It thanked Van Nistelrooy for his 'dedication and hard work,' while the former Manchester United star wished the team well for the future. The 48-year-old Van Nistelrooy previously coached Dutch side PSV Eindhoven and acted as an interim coach for United. Leicester faces the possibility of a points reduction in the Championship next season for a possible breach of financial rules.
15 minutes ago
Congo and Rwanda to sign US-mediated peace deal to end conflict in eastern Congo
DAKAR, Senegal -- The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda are set to sign a peace deal facilitated by the U.S. to help end the decadeslong deadly fighting in eastern Congo. The deal, to be signed in Washington Friday, would also help the U.S. government and American companies gain access to critical minerals in the conflict-battered, mineral-rich region. The Central African nation of Congo has been ripped apart by conflict with more than 100 armed groups. The most prominent is the M23 rebel group, backed by neighboring Rwanda, whose major advance early this year left bodies littered on the streets. With 7 million people displaced in Congo, the U.N. has called it 'one of the most protracted, complex, serious humanitarian crises on Earth.' Lauded by President Trump last week as 'a Great Day for Africa and ... for the World,' the crucial deal comes as part of other ongoing peace talks to end the conflict, including ones mediated by the African Union as well as Qatar. The agreement involves provisions on respect for territorial integrity, a prohibition of hostilities as well as the disengagement, disarmament and conditional integration of non-state armed groups, U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters on Thursday. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric also said on Thursday that such a deal is welcomed, adding: 'We talk almost every day about … the horrific suffering of civilians, the hunger, the sexual violence, the constant fear, the constant displacement' in eastern Congo. Congo hopes the U.S. will provide it with the security support needed to fight the rebels and possibly get them to withdraw from the key cities of Goma and Bukavu, and from the entire region where Rwanda is estimated to have up to 4,000 troops. Rwanda has said it is defending its territorial interests and not supporting the M23. However, the M23 rebels have suggested the agreement won't be binding on them. The rebel group has not been directly involved in the planned peace deal although it has been part of other ongoing peace talks. Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance that includes the M23, told the Associated Press in March that direct peace talks with Congo can only be held if the country acknowledges their grievances and that 'anything regarding us which are done without us, it's against us.' An M23 spokesman, Oscar Balinda, also echoed those thoughts in an interview with AP this week, saying the U.S.-facilitated deal does not concern the rebels. Analysts say the U.S. government's commitment might depend on how much access it has to the minerals being discussed under a separate minerals deal being negotiated. The mostly untapped minerals — estimated to be worth as much as $24 trillion by the U.S. Department of Commerce — are critical to much of the world's technology. Christian Moleka, a political scientist at the Congolese think tank Dypol, called the planned deal a 'major turning point' in the decadeslong conflict, but that the signing could "in no way eliminate all the issues of the conflict.' 'The current draft agreement ignores war crimes and justice for victims by imposing a partnership between the victim and the aggressor,' he said. 'This seems like a trigger-happy proposition and cannot establish lasting peace without justice and reparation.' In Congo's North Kivu province, the hardest hit by the fighting, some believe the peace deal will help resolve the violence but warn justice must still be served for an enduring peace to take hold. 'I don't think the Americans should be trusted 100%,' said Hope Muhinuka, an activist from the province. 'It is up to us to capitalize on all we have now as an opportunity.' —-
