Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump agreed to extend a trade truce brokered in Busan, South Korea last fall for a period of three months before their official bilateral talks began on Thursday.
Xi, who traveled to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, was greeted by Trump at Joint Base Andrews, arriving to military fanfare and the unfurling of a red carpet. By the evening, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had taken to Fox News to make the announcement that the two nations would push out the deadline on the Busan Agreement, set to expire on Nov. 10, to Jan. 10, 2027.
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Bessent told the outlet that extended talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday led to the arrangement. U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer hinted on Monday that the agreement could be pushed out for a short period of three-to-six months while talks continue.
“We still had some unfinished business,” Bessent said Wednesday. “We met today to see if we could do a bigger deal as opposed to just a series of smaller things.”
While the two sides presumably work toward fleshing out a more durable treaty, Bessent said the nations would continue “the economic détente” that has persisted for 11 months “to give us more time to see what we can do on the economic front.”
Bessent said he was bullish about the prospect of reaching lasting consensus with China in part because of the amount of face time Trump and Xi will get this year.
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