2LT International News

KUALA LUMPUR: Senior U.S. and Chinese officials began talks in Kuala Lumpur aimed at preventing their trade dispute from spiraling further and ensuring next week’s planned meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping goes ahead.

The discussions, held on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit, come amid mounting tensions after Trump threatened new 100 percent tariffs on Chinese goods starting November 1 in response to Beijing’s expanded export controls on rare earth magnets and minerals.

The U.S. and Chinese delegations are led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. They have met four times since May in attempts to stabilize relations. China’s top trade negotiator Li Chenggang also attended the session at Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118 tower on October 25.

Few details have been released about the closed-door meeting or its expected outcomes. Officials are working to keep the Trump–Xi talks, scheduled for next Thursday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, on track. That encounter could include discussions on tariffs, technology export controls, and the resumption of Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans.

Before leaving Washington on the night of October 24 for his five-day Asia trip, Trump told reporters that he hoped for a “good meeting” with Xi and listed U.S. farmers, Taiwan, and the jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai among his talking points. “We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk about with us,” Trump said, adding that he has no plans to visit Taiwan.

Trump’s Asia visit, which covers Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea, is his longest overseas trip since taking office in January. He said he also hopes China will cooperate with Washington in its dealings with Russia.

Analysts say the immediate challenge for negotiators is bridging differences over U.S. export controls on advanced technologies and China’s new rare earths restrictions, which have disrupted global supply chains.

“Bessent, Greer, and He must find a way to mitigate their dispute over technology export curbs and rare earths,” said Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council. “I’m not sure the Chinese can agree to that; it’s the primary leverage that they have.”

The U.S. and China are trying to avoid a return to the tit-for-tat tariff escalations that previously pushed duties on both sides above 100 percent. Earlier meetings in Geneva, London, and Stockholm produced a temporary truce that lowered tariffs to about 55 percent on U.S. goods and 30 percent on Chinese ones, while allowing magnet exports to resume.

That fragile calm unraveled in late September when the U.S. Commerce Department broadened its export blacklist to cover thousands of additional Chinese firms, automatically including any company more than 50 percent owned by a listed entity.

Beijing retaliated on October 10 by imposing global controls on rare earth exports, citing their use in military systems. Bessent and Greer called the move a “global supply chain power grab” and warned Washington would not tolerate it.

Washington has since floated new restrictions on software-linked exports to China, including laptops and jet engines, and on Friday announced a tariff probe into China’s compliance with the 2020 Phase One trade deal that paused the first Trump-era trade war.

“The question now,” said Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “is whether they can stabilize things before the presidents meet or whether this ends in another escalation.”