United States, China agree on framework to ease trade tensions

The United States and China on Tuesday agreed on a framework to de-escalate trade tensions and remove restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals imposed by Beijing on the North American country, Reuters reported.

The specifics of the framework were unclear. The apparent breakthrough came nearly a month after both countries agreed to suspend tariffs on each other’s goods for 90 days.

However, the agreement reached in Geneva faltered due to China’s continued curbs on critical minerals exports, Reuters reported. Washington had responded with curbs that prevented shipments of semiconductor design software, aircraft and other goods to China.

Speaking to reporters after two days of discussions in London, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said that the framework reached with Beijing puts “meat on the bones” of the agreement reached on May 12 in Geneva to ease bilateral retaliatory tariffs.

Lutnick said that the two countries would work to implement the “Geneva consensus” and had “pounded through” all the matters dividing the world’s two largest economies, Al Jazeera reported.

The US commerce secretary added that the agreement would remove restrictions on Chinese exports of rare earth minerals and magnets, and some of the recent US export restrictions “in a balanced way”, according to Reuters.

Rare earth elements are a subset of critical minerals, comprising 17 elements in the periodic table starting...

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