US-China tariff deal is a welcome pause, but big questions remain

Two cheers for the US-China trade-war pause Donald Trump and Xi Jinping managed to hammer out over the weekend. The accord takes tariffs on both sides down significantly, from 125% to 10% on US goods flowing to China and from 145% to 30% on Chinese goods flowing to the US.It will last for 90 days as the world’s pre-eminent economic power and its very hungry No.

2 try to achieve a reset on their deeply interlinked economies. This is good news in itself, as witness the happy reaction of the US market. That it comes on the heels of a UK-US trade deal brightens the picture still further by showing that despite screams of skepticism it is possible to reorganize global trade. But the US-China battle here was always going to be the hardest to end, so remember: This is not a resolution; it’s a delay of conflict.An economic cease-fire, not a peace treaty. The three months until expiry will give everyone from the White House on down a chance to plan for best- and worst-case scenarios while providing investors and consumers a respite from the chaos.  Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Please provide a valid email address.By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Never miss a story.Yes, the fact that the United States and China were able to set up this cooldown at all attests to how intertwined their economies are (and gives the lie to the much-bruited myth of Chinese autarky; the Middle Kingdom needs us as much as if not more than we need it). It shows too that both Trump and Xi are less obdurate than their posturing would suggest, though it was always foolish to take the rhetoric in the trade war’s early days at face value. So kudos to the White House for seeing this through — and here’s hoping the administration’s pragmatists on trade, like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, win out in the end. Both Trump’s presidency and the US economy are depend...