The United States and China have agreed to extend their trade truce by two months, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday, September 23, giving both sides more time to explore what Beijing has proposed as a potentially far larger trade agreement, ahead of a Trump-Xi summit at the White House the following day.
What Bessent Announced
Speaking on Fox News after his second meeting in four days with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, Bessent said: "We met today to see if we could do a bigger deal as opposed to just a series of smaller things," noting the two-month extension of the trade truce originally agreed in Busan, South Korea, in May would give both sides "more time to see what we can do on the economic front." The truce had been set to expire on November 10.
Where the "Bigger Deal" Idea Came From
Bessent told reporters earlier in the day that Beijing had raised the prospect of a more expansive trade deal during roughly 12 hours of talks on Sunday, though he gave no specific details on its potential scope. "The Chinese on Sunday came up with the idea of a bigger deal, and given that this could be a historic year where the leaders meet up to four times — this being the second meeting, in Shenzhen and then in Miami — we're open to the idea of just continuing the Busan arrangement or examining the bigger deal," Bessent said.
The Meeting Itself
Wednesday's session took place at the World Bank headquarters in Washington and lasted about 90 minutes. Bessent described it as clearing up some "unfinished business" ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, saying the administration wants strategic stability based on "reciprocity and fairness." He, along with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, had also met with He Lifeng in New York the previous Sunday specifically to lay groundwork for potential trade and AI agreements for the two leaders to consider.
A Separate Breakthrough: AI Safety Hotline
Bessent characterized the Sunday talks as "successful," revealing the two sides had agreed to launch a communications "hotline" for notifying each other about AI safety incidents — a concrete outcome tied to the broader AI guardrails discussion that has run in parallel with the trade negotiations ahead of the summit. China's response to the AI hotline proposal was less clear, with state news agency Xinhua only partially acknowledging the arrangement.
Setting Up Thursday's Trump-Xi Meeting
With Wednesday's groundwork now in place, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping were expected to discuss these issues further at the White House on Thursday, September 24 — the formal summit both governments had been building toward through weeks of preliminary staff-level talks covering rare earths, AI guardrails, tariffs, and now the extended truce.
A Notably Frequent Diplomatic Rhythm
Bessent's framing of this as potentially "a historic year" reflects an unusually intensive pace of high-level US-China engagement: Sunday's meeting was the two officials' second in four days, and Bessent noted the possibility of the two presidents meeting up to four times this year across venues including Shenzhen and Miami — a markedly more frequent cadence of leader-level engagement than has characterized much of the broader trade relationship in recent years.
What's Still Unresolved
Despite the extension and the AI hotline agreement, key substantive issues remain unaddressed publicly: the specific terms of any "bigger deal," the fate of outstanding disputes over rare-earth mineral flows (which US officials have said China has been slow to deliver on), and how the two sides will handle the broader tariff structure once the two-month extension itself runs out. Bessent gave no details about what a larger agreement might actually include.
What's Next
With the truce extension now confirmed and Thursday's Trump-Xi summit imminent, attention turns to whether the two leaders can translate this staff-level groundwork into a concrete framework — or whether the "bigger deal" remains, for now, more of an aspiration than an actual agreement. For continuing coverage, see the full Reuters report via The Korea Times.