Bessent Says US Agreed to Extend China Trade Deal Through Jan. 10

The United States and China have agreed to extend the trade truce for two months, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday, after another round of talks with his Chinese counterpart, He Lifeng. 

“I don’t know whether a bigger deal can be done. I don’t know whether we will just roll the current deal,” Bessent said on Fox News on Wednesday evening.

Currently, the United States and China are in a one-year trade truce, reached after a bilateral summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in October 2025 in Busan, South Korea. It’s set to expire on Nov. 10. 

U.S. officials have criticized Beijing for failing to live up to its commitments under the current deal.

“There’s some deliverables that have not been perfect on the Chinese side. … We also want to see, now that we’ve sat down and told them our expectations, to see if, over the coming months, they could be a bit more fulsome in enacting the agreement,” Bessent told Fox News.

Earlier, Bessent told reporters after emerging from talks at the World Bank headquarters in Washington that the Chinese trade representatives proposed a “bigger deal” during a previous round of meetings on Sunday. He didn’t elaborate on the details of the Chinese proposal. 

“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. “We’re fine with both, and we’re going to do what’s best for the American people.”

The latest sessions came as Trump is set to host Xi in Washington—their second summit in four months.

In a social media post, Bessent characterized the discussions with He as “substantive.” 

“Our discussions continued to focus on securing meaningful commitments that protect American workers, farmers, and businesses while advancing U.S. economic and national security interests,” he said on X after the meeting.

Negotiation teams led by Bessent and He last met in New York on Sunday to prepare for the upcoming summit between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies. After the first day of talks, the two sides agreed to “operationalize” U.S. proposals for a Board of Trade and to launch a formal artificial intelligence (AI) dialogue, according to Bessent. 

“We’ve now formalized something called the USA-China AI dialogues. We’ve agreed to meet again probably in two months in Shenzhen,” Bessent told CNBC on Monday.

Bessent said the two sides also agreed to set up “an incident line” to ensure constant communication about AI, especially in the event of safety incidents. 

“And then we want to start discussing protocols … so both sides can agree on what the leading AI dangers are, whether it’s uncontrollable agents, whether it’s non-state actors, and cyber non-state actors in bioweapons,” he added. 

U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer, who also joined Sunday’s negotiations, told Bloomberg TV on Monday that the two sides would continue discussions about extending the trade deal.

Asked why the deal cannot be extended now, Greer pointed to ensuring China’s compliance with its commitment to issue export licenses for rare earths. 

“China has created this uncertainty. They’ve limited rare earth exports. They’ve controlled them. We monitor them,” he said. “And I think just saying, you know, we have full trust and full confidence in each other at this point, I think is a little naive.”