China and the United States on September 28, 2026 each published lists of goods eligible for reciprocal tariff cuts, with each side reducing tariffs on roughly $30 billion of the other's imports — a combined roughly $60 billion in trade — and more than 90% of the covered products set to fall to most-favored-nation (MFN) tariff levels. The move is the latest concrete outcome of the thaw in China-US economic relations following the Trump-Xi summit in Washington earlier this month, and the first substantive tariff-cutting package since the two sides set up the U.S.-China Board of Trade in Beijing this past May.
According to lists released by China's Ministry of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative's office, China's tariff-reduction list for U.S. goods covers 1,619 tariff lines, including agricultural products, fish and seafood, logs and wood products, cosmetics and medical devices. The U.S. list covering Chinese goods spans 77 tariff categories, including fireworks, tableware, glass and wooden Christmas ornaments and soccer balls — areas where China holds strong export positions — as well as some household appliances and toys. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the arrangement opens market access for products representing roughly 30% of U.S. exports to China, while letting American consumers buy Chinese-made household goods and toys — items the U.S. generally does not produce domestically — more cheaply.
The tariff lists are the first formal recommendations issued under the U.S.-China Board of Trade, the mechanism Trump and Xi announced when they met in Beijing this past May to provide a standing channel for resolving trade issues in non-sensitive sectors. Its senior members include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, USTR Jamieson Greer and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. Teams from both sides held a fresh round of talks in New York and Washington from September 20 to 23, before releasing their roughly $30-billion-each tariff-cut lists on September 28 — a sign the Board is now formally operational. Around the same time, the White House released a "Working Procedures for the U.S.-China Board of Trade" document spelling out how future tariff-cut recommendations will be reviewed and how the body will hold regular meetings.
Announced alongside the tariff lists was a new agricultural working group under the Board of Trade, co-led by China's Ministry of Commerce and the USTR, with its first meeting expected before the end of 2026. The group's mandate is to address two-way market access and regulatory issues — including, on the U.S. side, follow-through on China's pledges to buy soybeans, corn and other farm products, and on China's side, concerns over U.S. inspection, quarantine and biotech-approval rules that Beijing considers non-tariff barriers. Notably, soybeans — the most politically charged commodity in the broader trade dispute — were left off this particular tariff-cut list, underscoring that agriculture remains a central unresolved front.
The deal builds on more than a year of escalation and de-escalation between the two economies. In February 2025 the United States imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods over Beijing's alleged failure to curb the flow of fentanyl precursors, doubling it to 20% in March; tit-for-tat measures followed, and the average U.S. tariff on Chinese imports climbed as high as 57%. In early October 2025, China sharply widened its rare-earth export controls, rattling global supply chains and pushing the trade relationship toward crisis.
The turning point came on October 30, 2025, when Trump and Xi met in Busan, South Korea, and struck a phased truce: the U.S. cut its average tariff on Chinese goods from 57% to 47%, including lowering the fentanyl-related tariff from 20% to 10%; China agreed to suspend its new rare-earth export controls for one year and pledged to resume and expand U.S. farm purchases, including 25 million metric tons of soybeans annually for three years. That Busan meeting laid the groundwork for both the Board of Trade set up in Beijing this May and this month's tariff-cut package.
From September 23 to 25, Xi made his first state visit to the United States in more than a decade, meeting Trump in Washington. The summit's central deliverable was a further two-month extension of the tariff truce, to January 10, 2027, giving both sides time to assess the current arrangement and negotiate next steps; the two leaders also agreed to set up a military crisis-communication channel. Several analyses described the summit as heavy on ceremony but light on substantive breakthroughs — a "managed decline" rather than a structural shift in relations — with core disputes over U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors and China's rare-earth policy still unresolved. The $30-billion-each tariff-cut lists released on September 28 are one concrete follow-through from that summit.
China's Ministry of Commerce said the agreement would "further stabilize" China-U.S. economic and trade relations and "create favorable conditions" for Chinese exports to the United States, adding that both sides would hold regular talks on investment opportunities and barriers, transparency and predictability, and industry concerns. Treasury Secretary Bessent called the latest round of talks "very successful" and said the Board of Trade mechanism was now operational. USTR Greer's statement framed the tariff cuts as an important step toward the Trump administration's goal of a "fair and reciprocal" trade relationship with China.
Analysts note that the roughly $60 billion in combined trade covered is modest next to the hundreds of billions of dollars in annual two-way trade between the two economies, but as the Board of Trade's first concrete output, it carries symbolic weight and could add some certainty to a fragile truce, steadying expectations among businesses and markets. Two dates will be closely watched in the coming months: whether the agricultural working group's first meeting, due before year-end, yields progress on soybean purchases and inspection standards, and whether the two sides can reach new arrangements on thornier issues — semiconductor export controls and rare-earth policy chief among them — before the truce expires on January 10, 2027. For China, a key gauge of success will be whether the talks push Washington to ease restrictions on advanced chip exports; for the U.S., a key test will be whether China's rare-earth export controls stay lifted once the current one-year suspension ends next year — a marker of how much trust the two sides have rebuilt.
