u. s. farmer

WASHINGTON — President Trump faces the most important international meeting of his second term so far on Thursday: face-to-face negotiations with Xi Jinping, who has made China a formidable economic and military challenger to the United States.

The two presidents face a vast agenda during their meeting in Seoul, beginning with the two countries’ escalating trade war over tariffs and high-tech exports. The list also includes U.S. demands for a Chinese crackdown on fentanyl, China’s aid to Russia in its war with Ukraine, the future of Taiwan and China’s growing nuclear arsenal.

Trump has already promised, characteristically, that the meeting will be a major success.

“It’s going to be fantastic for both countries, and it’s going to be fantastic for the entire world,” he said last week.

But it isn’t yet clear that the summit’s concrete results will measure up to that high standard.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the two sides have agreed to a “framework” under which China would delay implementing tight controls on rare earth elements, minerals crucial for the production of high-tech products from smartphones and electric vehicles to military aircraft and missiles. He said China has also agreed to resume buying soybeans from U.S. farmers and to crack down on fentanyl components.

In return, Bessent said, the United States will back down from its stinging tariffs on Chinese goods.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador in Beijing under then-President Biden, said that kind of deal would amount to “an uneasy trade truce rather than a comprehensive trade deal.”

“That may be the best we can expect,” he said in an interview Monday. Still, he added, “it will be a positive step to stabilize world markets and allow the continuation of U.S.-China trade for the time being.”

But U.S. and Chinese officials have been close-mouthed on what, if anything, has been agreed on regarding Xi’s other big trade demand: easier U.S. restrictions on high-tech exports to China, especially advanced semiconductor chips used for artificial intelligence.

Burns said the two superpowers’ technology competition is “the most sensitive … in terms of where this relationship will head, which country will emerge more powerful.”

Giving China easy access to advanced semiconductors “would only help [the Chinese army] in its competition with the U.S. military for power in the Indo-Pacific,” he warned.

Other former officials and China hawks outside the administration have said, even more pointedly, that they worry that Trump may be too willing to trade long-term technology assets for short-term trade deals.

In August, Trump eased export controls to allow Nvidia, the world leader in AI chips, to sell more semiconductors to China — in an unusual deal under which the U.S. company would pay 15% of its revenue from the sales to the U.S. Treasury.

Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s top China advisor in his first term, protested in a recent podcast interview that the deal risked trading a strategic technology advantage “for $20 billion and Nvidia’s bottom line.”

Underlying the controversy over technology, some China watchers warn, is a basic mismatch between the two presidents: Trump is focused almost entirely on trade and commercial deals, while Xi is focused on displacing the United States as the biggest economic and military power in Asia.

“I don’t think the administration has a strategy toward China,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It has a trade strategy, not a China strategy.”

“The administration does not seem to be focused on competition with China,” said Jonathan Czin, a former CIA analyst now at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “It’s focused on deal making. … It’s tactics without strategy.”

“We’ve fallen into a kind of trade and technology myopia,” he added. “We’re not talking about issues like China’s coercion [of smaller countries] in the South China Sea. … China doesn’t want to have that bigger, broader conversation.”

It isn’t clear that Trump and Xi will have either the time or inclination to talk in detail about anything other than trade.

And even on the front-burner economic issues, this week’s ceasefire is unlikely to produce a permanent peace.

“As with all such agreements, the devil will be in the details,” Burns, the former ambassador, said. “The two countries will remain fierce trade rivals. Expect friction ahead and further trade duels well into 2026.”

“Buckle up,” Czin said. “There are likely more sudden moves from Beijing ahead.”

In the long run, Trump’s legacy in U.S.-China relations will rest not only on trade deals but on the larger competition for economic and military power in the Pacific Rim. No matter how this week’s meetings go, those challenges still lie ahead.

WASHINGTON — A trade deal with the United Kingdom announced by the White House on Thursday marked the first of its kind since President Trump launched sweeping global tariffs last month, offering a glimpse into the Trump administration’s negotiating strategy as it seeks to reset terms with trading partners around the world.

The agreement, hailed by Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “historic,” kept the U.S. baseline tariff rate on U.K. imports at 10%, while eliminating duties on British aluminum and steel and significantly lowering tariffs on a limited number of U.K. car exports.

In exchange, the White House said that London had agreed to lower barriers on U.S. farmers and ranchers seeking access to the U.K. market for exports like ethanol and beef, and to increase access for U.S. aerospace companies to critical British-made components.

While the White House called the agreement a “milestone” in its trade policy, U.S. officials also described the deal as merely the “end of the beginning” of talks to come over their trade relationship.

Starmer, describing the announcement as the “basis” of a deal, said he intended to continue negotiating with the administration to bring down its 10% baseline rate. “We would like to go further,” he said from a manufacturing plant in the West Midlands.

“But please do not underestimate the significance of the tariff reductions today, because these are measured in thousands of good-paying jobs across the country,” Starmer said.

Asked by a reporter whether Britain was better off in its trade relationship with America than it was a year ago, Starmer replied, “The question you should be asking is, is it better than where we were yesterday?”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 500 points on news of the deal, as Wall Street investors look for signs of progress in trade negotiations over five weeks out since Trump announced tariff increases on global trading partners, “friend and foe alike.”

Of the 10 largest U.S. trading partners, only the United Kingdom has a trade deficit with the United States. But the agreement will mean more to the British economy than it will to U.S. households. While the U.K. ranks eighth overall among U.S. trading partners, the United States is Britain’s largest, followed by the European Union.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in an English car factory, holds a call with President Trump to announce a trade deal.

(Alberto Pezzali / WPA Pool / Getty Images)

Americans buy exponentially more goods from the United States’ three biggest trading partners — in Canada, Mexico and China — than from Britain, and there are few signs that U.S. talks with those three countries are closing in on trade deals.

And with goods from China still facing tariffs of 145%, U.S. importers and retailers are warning that price increases for American consumers will become visible within a matter of days.

From the White House, where he phoned Starmer to announce the deal to the press, Trump described the U.S.-U.K. agreement as “a great deal for both parties.”

“It opens up a tremendous market for us, and it works out very well. Very well,” Trump said. “The deal includes billions of dollars of increased market access for American exports, especially in agriculture, dramatically increasing access for American beef, ethanol, and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers.”

“It’s very conclusive, and it’s a great deal, and it’s a very big deal, actually,” he added.

Trump underscored the potential for the export of up to $250 million in U.S. agricultural products to a market that had long been restricted to U.S. goods. But Starmer said that the U.K. government had drawn “red lines on standards” with regard to agricultural imports, raising questions over what exact products would be eligible.

Starmer said he hoped that the Trump administration would lower barriers on British pharmaceutical products in future talks, and also said the two governments were already discussing Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign film production.

“There aren’t any tariffs in place on film at the moment,” Starmer said of the potential film tariffs, “and of course, we’re discussing it with the president’s team.”