US and China Open Trade Board Talks on Tariffs and Farm Goods

China and the United States held the inaugural meeting of their new Board of Trade on November 13, opening a formal channel for disputes over tariffs and agricultural commerce just days before Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are due to meet in Shenzhen. China’s Ministry of Commerce said the session took place by video and focused on implementing earlier economic and trade understandings.

The ministry said the agenda included tariffs, a reciprocal “$30 billion for $30 billion” tariff-reduction arrangement, farm trade and other concerns raised by both governments. It described the exchange as candid, detailed and constructive, but announced no new agreement, timetable or list of participants. Reuters separately reported that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed the meeting and said Washington expected continued engagement.

A standing channel, not a finished settlement

The board was created after the May meeting between Trump and Xi in Beijing. Its published working procedures define it as a government-to-government body overseen by senior economic officials, with deputies tasked with developing proposals. The immediate mandate is deliberately narrow: identify mutually accepted goods on which each side can reduce tariffs under its own domestic laws.

In September, both governments published the outline of the reciprocal package. Each side identified roughly $30 billion of the other’s exports for better treatment. China’s list included U.S. agricultural products, personal-care goods, medical devices and coal; the U.S. list included Chinese toys, household appliances, baby products and kitchen and bathroom goods. More than 90 percent of the listed products are intended to lose the additional tariffs imposed during earlier trade confrontations and return to most-favored-nation treatment.

That framework is significant, but it should not be confused with a completed liberalization deal. The lists still have to move through each country’s legal procedures, and Friday’s statement did not say those steps were finished. The board therefore institutionalizes bargaining without removing the underlying struggle over market access, industrial policy, technology controls and Washington’s continuing use of tariffs as an instrument of economic pressure.

APEC China 2026 signage outside the Shenzhen Art Museum on November 10, 2026. The trade-board meeting took place ahead of next week’s leaders’ summit. Photo: Wodwo Lee SAO CH / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0.

The timing gives the first meeting added weight. Trump and Xi are expected to meet on the sidelines of the APEC summit, while the White House has also announced a separate three-power discussion on nuclear arms. Pamphlets reported earlier that officials are presenting the summit as an opening conversation rather than a venue for a sweeping settlement. The trade board gives the two governments a channel that can continue after the leaders leave Shenzhen.

The test is implementation

Agriculture will be one of the first practical tests. The September framework created a specialist working group on farm regulation, access and trade concerns. For U.S. farmers, tariff relief is being sold as a route back into the Chinese market. For China, the question is whether reciprocal cuts will be accompanied by stable rules rather than repeated threats of new duties, export restrictions or politically driven exclusions.

The distributional consequences matter. Lower tariffs on consumer goods can reduce costs, but negotiated product lists also decide which industries receive relief and which remain exposed. Workers on both sides have little formal voice in a process led by finance and trade officials. A durable arrangement should therefore be judged not only by the headline value of trade covered, but by whether it protects employment, restrains coercive economic measures and prevents commercial disputes from escalating into broader confrontation.

Friday’s meeting does not settle those questions. It does establish a venue in which they can be negotiated without another round of unilateral escalation. That is a modest advance: two governments with the world’s largest bilateral trading relationship are testing whether regular bargaining can replace economic brinkmanship. The next evidence will be concrete — synchronized tariff changes, published implementation dates and results from the agricultural working group — rather than another statement of intent.

Related: China’s recent extension of its U.S. tariff and port-fee pause.

Sources and image records: Chinese Ministry of Commerce statement; Reuters report; U.S.–China Board of Trade working procedures; USTR September framework statement. Cover photo: official White House photograph by Daniel Torok, October 30, 2025, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Inline photo: Wodwo Lee SAO CH, November 10, 2026, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.