US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that talks with China on a tariff deal were “moving along well” and that the countries would reach a “fair” deal on trade, without offering additional details of the agreement.
“We’re moving along with China. We’re doing fine with China,” Trump told reporters before leaving a bill-signing ceremony at the White House.
“I think it’s going to work out very well. We’re right in step ... I think we’re going to have a very fair deal with China,” he added.
Though reporters asked about the talks, the president did not confirm that the US and China would extend their “pause” on tariffs that the world’s two largest economies have imposed on each other’s goods.
On Tuesday, delegations from the countries finished a third round of high-level talks in Stockholm, Sweden, ahead of an August 12 expiration of that pause.
Beijing and Washington had been expected to extend their tariff truce another three months, sources on both sides told the South China Morning Post before discussions began on Monday.
At separate briefings on Tuesday in Stockholm, US and Chinese negotiators, while calling their discussions “constructive”, diverged on the timing of the fresh tariff pause.
Li Chenggang, China’s vice-minister of commerce, told reporters that the two sides had reached a “consensus” concerning the pause extension, though he did not specify a date.
But US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent denied that any agreement on a new pause had been reached, insisting that nothing would be agreed to until Trump was briefed.
“I notice ... that the Chinese deputy minister did say that we had agreed on a pause,” Bessent said. “We have not. Nothing is agreed until we speak with President Trump.”
“I think our Chinese counterparts have jumped the gun a little and said that we do have an extension,” he told CNBC later.
En route to the US from Scotland on Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he would review the deal, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that “we’ll either approve it or not”.
The Stockholm talks, led by Bessent and Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng, were the third time the delegations had met in an effort to stabilise trade after both countries hiked tariffs on each other’s goods to triple-digit rates in April.
So far, Washington has only reached trade agreements with a handful of major partners, including Britain, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and the European Union, with countries other than China facing a Friday deadline to cut deals.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. This month it noted that China’s exports to the US declined by 24 per cent year on year in the second quarter of 2025, with the situation “equivalent to the first quarter of 2020 when the economy activity was stagnant” during the pandemic.
