China hails Trump-Xi truce to halt trade war; Promises to import more from US

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump's decision to suspend imposing of any new tariffs for 90 days for talks to address the trade dispute has put brakes on the escalating trade war between the world two largest economies, a relived China said on Sunday.

At their "highly successful" dinner meeting on the sidelines of the annual G-20 Summit in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires, Trump agreed to postpone for 90 days a scheduled increase in tariffs on USD 200 billion in Chinese imports, while Xi agreed to purchase a very substantial amount of US products so as to reduce the USD 375 billion trade deficit between the two countries.

During the meeting, which had also raised global expectations of an end to the six-month-long trade war, Trump agreed that on January 1, 2019, he will leave the tariffs on USD 200 billion worth of product at the 10 per cent rate, and not raise it to 25 per cent at this time.

If there is no deal at the end of the 90-day grace period, the US will increase the tariffs on the USD 200 billions of goods from 10 per cent to 25 per cent.

Addressing the media, at Buenor Aires, after the talks, Chinese Foreign minister Wang Yi acknowledged that China would import more from the US and address Washington's concerns in the 90-day period.

"In a friendly and candid atmosphere, the two presidents had profound discussions that lasted for two-and-a-half hours. The time was much longer than the schedule," the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Wang as saying.

It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since Trump's China visit in November last year and since both countries started imposing tit-tat tariffs on each other's exports.

According to Wang, the two presidents reached important common understanding and the meeting certainly has "charted the course for China-US relations in some time to come."
Playing down domestic concerns of any compromise by China giving in to Trump's demands, it said "the Chinese public needs to keep in mind that China-US trade negotiations fluctuate. China's reform and opening-up's broad perspective recognises that the rest of the world does things differently."