US - China set high-level meeting in London
Three of President Donald Trump's top aides will face their Chinese counterparts in London on June 9.
The two sides will negotiate to resolve the trade dispute between the world's two largest economies, which has kept global markets in a state of constant uncertainty.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will represent Washington in the negotiations, Mr Trump said.
It was not immediately clear who would represent China. The Chinese Embassy in Washington and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for further details.
"The meeting will go very well," Mr. Trump wrote.
The scheduling of the meeting comes a day after Mr Trump held a rare phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping amid weeks of trade tensions and a battle over control of strategic minerals. Both leaders agreed to visit each other and asked their teams to hold talks in the meantime.
Both countries are under pressure to ease tensions, as the global economy comes under pressure from China's clampdown on exports of rare earth minerals of which it is a key producer.
Investors are also worried about Mr Trump's broader effort to impose tariffs on goods from most of America's trading partners.
Meanwhile, China has also seen its supplies of key US imports such as chip design software and nuclear plant parts cut.
The two countries reached a 90-day deal on May 12 in Geneva to ease some of the triple-digit tit-for-tat tariffs they have imposed on each other since Mr Trump took office in January 2025.
That preliminary agreement sparked a bullish rally in global stock markets, with U.S. indexes, which had been in or near bear market territory, recovering most of their losses.
The S&P 500, which fell nearly 18% at its low in early April after Mr Trump announced sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs, is now just 2% off its mid-February record high. The last third of that rally came after the US-China truce reached in Geneva.
But that interim deal fails to address broader concerns straining the bilateral relationship, from the illicit fentanyl trade to Taiwan and U.S. complaints about China’s state-dominated, export-oriented economic model.
Since returning to the White House in January, Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened a range of sanctions against trading partners, only to back off on some of them at the last minute. This on-again, off-again approach has confounded world leaders and alarmed business executives.
Beijing sees mineral exports as a source of leverage – stopping exports could put domestic political pressure on the Republican president if economic growth slows because companies are unable to produce products that require minerals.
In recent years, the US has identified China as its top geopolitical rival and the only country in the world capable of challenging the US economically and militarily.
