The United States and China have agreed to a framework to ease trade tensions, which have been escalating between the two nations for months.
The plan emerged after two days of talks in London, and both nations will now take the outlined plan back to their respective presidents, according to China’s chief trade negotiator Li Chenggang.
While the details of the framework have yet to be released, negotiators from the States said they would “absolutely expect” that specific issues, such as the shipments of rare earth minerals and magnets, would be resolved through the plan.
“We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus and the call between the two presidents,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters in London.
“Once the presidents approve it, we will then seek to implement it."
Addressing the press, Lutnick also commented on the key points of rare earth mineral exports and retaliatory measures by the U.S. in that sector.
“We do absolutely expect that the topic of rare earth minerals and magnets with respect to the United States of America will be resolved in this framework implementation,” he confirmed.
“Also, there were a number of measures the United States of America put on when those rare earths were not coming… you should expect those to come off — sort of, as President Trump said, in a balanced way. When they approve the licenses, then you should expect that our export implementation will come down as well.”
