Image Credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN / Staff / Getty Images 
The US and China have resolved difficulties around the shipment of rare-earth metals and magnets that led to the breakdown of trade talks last month.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the progress on Friday.
Despite commitments from Beijing to increase the flow of these critical materials, which are essential to a wide range of technological goods including automobiles and military equipment, shipments remained sluggish through May, causing the US to put in place countermeasures.
Bessent said he is now confident “the magnets will flow.”
President Donald Trump spoke personally to Chinese premier Xi Jinping, and trade teams met in London to iron out the differences between the two countries.
On Thursday, Trump said the US had now signed a deal with China, but did not provide any further details.
“The administration and China agreed to an additional understanding for a framework to implement the Geneva agreement,” a US official said the same day.
The Geneva agreement, reached in May, faltered because China was slow to increase shipments of rare-earth metals and magnets, after announcing punitive curbs on their export in relation to President Trump’s tariffs. In response to China’s foot-dragging, Trump prevented shipment of design software for semiconductors, as well as aircraft and other goods, to China.
The ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing stems from President Trump’s flagship policy of tariffs on foreign goods entering the US.
Trump made the imposition of tariffs a certain plank of his economic policy during the election. Since his inauguration in January, he has levied special tariffs on Mexico and Canada for their role in the US fentanyl and immigration crises, and in recent weeks he announced a new round of “reciprocal” tariffs on many of the US’s larger and smaller trading partners.
President Trump raised his tariff against China to 125%, while pausing his increased reciprocal tariffs against other countries for 90 days.
“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.”
