Unied States President Donald Trump has delayed U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods from snapping back into place for another 90 days.
A White House Official told CNBC that Trump had signed an executive order hours before the tariffs were set to resume, extending the deadline to mid-November.
This was the expected outcome from the last round of talks between U.S. trade negotiators and their Chinese counterparts, which took place in Stockholm in late July.
If the deadline hadn’t been extended, the U.S. would have risen back to where they were in April when the tariff war between the two countries began.
When the talks took place, Trump had increased blanket tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%. China retaliated with 125% duties on U.S. goods.
But the two major trading nations agreed to pause these tariffs when negotiators met for the first time in May in Geneva. This led to the U.S. paring back its tariffs to 30% and China dropping levies to 10%.
This continues a trend of Trump threatening large tariffs on sectors and countries, only to scale them back or pause them.
Trump also recently cracked down on issuing tariffs to countries that bought Russian oil, including India, which saw a 25% increase in tariffs, despite purchasing significantly less than China.
In an interview with Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said similar tariffs for China are being considered, but that Trump has yet to make a decision.
“Given that we seem to be headed toward some type of deal with China leading to some kind of meeting between Xi and Trump, the administration has definitely been more conciliatory towards China in the past few weeks,” Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator who is now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said.
