New China Trade Deal - Better Than We Have, Not as Good as What We Had
Media Hit, 10/30/25
I’m going on Fox LiveNOW tonight around 10:00 PM eastern time to talk about the latest and greatest trade deal with China, which was just announced earlier today. While the ink still has to dry, the specifics of the deal that we’ve heard thus far include:
China resumes buying soybeans
China stopping the flow of chemicals that make fentanyl
The US no longer imposing the additional 100% tariff slated to start tomorrow.
US tariffs on China decrease by 10% to 47% instead of 57%
Rare earth minerals resume flowing for one year
All of this is a one year “reprieve” from the, frankly, craziness of the US-China trade… situation of the past 8 months or so.
It’s now easier for China to purchase chips from Nvidia
And here are some of the latest news packages on this trade deal, in case you want to watch those. They’re in no particular order, though I am a fan of the WSJ’s discussion of it:
Anyway, on to the talking points!
What the US gets out of this
China agrees to stop the flow of the chemicals used to make fentanyl into the US.
This is a huge win if it comes to fruition. China has promised this in the past and has, thus far at least, failed to deliver. But if this happens, that’s GREAT.
China has agreed to resume purchases of soybeans
Farmers have been absolutely devastated by China (their number one customer) boycotting US soybeans. Things were getting so bad that Trump was floating another bailout of farmers hurt by the tariffs.
Again, if this happens, and we avoid the farm bailout, then that’s great. But that’s yet another if statement.
China agrees to rescind its restrictions on the import of “rare earth minerals” for one year.
This, again, is a huge win. Those are absolutely mission critical for basically everything in our economy today, so not having access to them is a big problem.
And apparently it will take at least a decade to get our own rare earth minerals extraction and processing capacity up to the levels we would need to be self-sufficient, anyway.
But it’s also be more expensive for us to do it ourselves, so…
It sounds like China is lifting the ban on chips made by Nvidia.
But Trump was very clear that he is going to talk to Nvidia’s CEO about all of this.
What China gets out of this
No more additional 100% tariff, which was slated to take effect tomorrow.
In fact, the tariff rate for China has come down, effective immediately, from 57% to 47%.
So who “won” this negotiation?
This is really tough to say, mostly because we don’t have a good grasp of what “victory” looks like in a trade war.
For me, it looks a lot like bilateral overall reductions in trade restrictions between countries relative to where they were originally.
Given that e.g. tariffs were 19.8% up to Trump’s inauguration and they now apparently stand at 47%, I don’t see much of a “victory” here.
Likewise, Chinese tariffs on US goods have jumped from 21.1% to 32.6%, so again… no victory there.
I think it’s plain to see that this is all an improvement over what we had one week ago, which… great.
But this is not some slam dunk “win” for either country.
Edit: Here’s the link to the segment