By Chrystal NK Chukwudebe
MON MAY 12 2025-theGBJournal| The U.S and China on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland, announced that they have agreed to temporarily suspend tariffs on each other’s good for 90 days, slashing reciprocal duties to ease rising global trade tension.
Under the new trade deal, the U.S will slash tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30%, while China will slash tariffs U.S imports from 125% to 10%. The U.S 20% duties on Chinese imports relating to fentanyl will however, stay in place.
U.S Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said during a press conference, after the deal was reached between trade representatives of both countries, ”we added great equanimity to what was a very positive process.”
”We have reached an agreement on a 90-day pause and substantially moved down the tariff levels,” Bessent added.
U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer said it was important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as maybe thought.
”The United States has a massive $1.2 trillion trade deficit, so the President declared a national emergency and imposed tariffs, and we we’re confident that the deal we struck with our Chinese partners will help us work toward resolving that national emergency.”
Both sides also agreed to establishing a formal dialogue on economic and trade policy which will be conducted alternately in China and the U.S, or a third party country.
U.S and Asian markets were buoyed by news of the deal as U.S stocks surged. S&P 500 futures jumped 2.8%, while Dow Industrial Average futures surged by 900 points.
The Asian-Pacific markets also rallied. Hong Kong stocks rose over 3% with the Hang Seng Index climbing 2.98%. The Hang Seng Tech Index also advanced 5.16% to 5,447.35, its highest level since April 2.
In China, the CSI 300 rose 1.16% to close the day at 3,890.60.
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