U.S., China keep talks alive in Paris as Trump’s 15% global tariff tests fragile truce

PARIS — At the glass-and-steel headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development along the Seine, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stepped to the lectern and insisted the latest round of talks with China had gone to plan.

“The meetings were constructive and they show the stability in the relationship,” Bessent told reporters Monday. “The purpose of these meetings is to prevent any retaliation.”

A few doors away, China’s top trade emissary was delivering a more pointed message. Li Chenggang, China’s international trade representative, warned that President Donald Trump’s new global tariffs and fresh U.S. trade investigations could “harm the countries’ trade relationship” and “interfere with or damage” what he called “hard-won and stable” ties.

Between the two statements hung a 15% tariff on almost all U.S. imports, a recent Supreme Court ruling that upended Trump’s earlier tariff strategy, a live war with Iran and a planned Trump–Xi summit in Beijing that has already slipped from its original March dates.

A “work plan,” not a deal

The two days of negotiations in Paris, led by Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Sunday and Monday, were billed as the first major high-level economic talks between Washington and Beijing since the Supreme Court curtailed Trump’s use of emergency tariff powers in February. They were also meant to lay the groundwork for Trump’s first visit to China since 2017 and a face-to-face meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Instead of a sweeping deal, officials on both sides emerged with a more modest result: a pledge to keep talking, a sketch of a “work plan” for a future summit and a shared but fragile desire to avoid a new round of tit-for-tat tariffs.

Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative who joined Bessent in Paris, said the discussions outlined “the general terms of a work plan” for a Trump–Xi agenda.

“The president’s trade policy hasn’t changed — our tools may change,” Greer told reporters, referring to the Supreme Court’s February ruling that the president cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs.

A Supreme Court ruling forces a pivot

That decision, in Learning Resources Inc. v. Trump, invalidated a wide range of import duties Trump had levied under emergency authority during his second term. The next day, Trump announced a 10% tariff on nearly all imports under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, later raising it to 15% and describing it as a temporary “universal tariff.”

Economists estimate most of the burden from earlier tariffs was passed on to American consumers through higher prices. Analysts say the new 15% levy is likely to reinforce that pattern, while inviting legal challenges and retaliation from trading partners.

China sees relief—and new risks

For China, the shift has produced both relief and new worries. The Supreme Court ruling forced Washington to roll back some of the most punishing duties that, along with Chinese countermeasures, had pushed tariff rates on some products into triple digits before Trump and Xi agreed to a one-year truce at a summit in Busan, South Korea, in October 2025.

Under that Busan understanding, both governments suspended or reduced their most extreme tariffs and promised to avoid new escalation through late 2026. Beijing also delayed or softened some planned export controls on critical materials.

Trump’s global tariff, even though it applies to all countries rather than singling out China, tests the limits of that truce.

Chinese officials in Paris argued the new U.S. measures — and a wave of investigations launched after the court ruling — risk undermining what little stability Busan delivered.

Li said Beijing raised “serious concern” about U.S. probes into manufacturing in third countries, aimed at tracking companies that move production to nations such as Vietnam or Mexico to route goods around U.S. tariffs. Critics in Asia and Europe describe those practices as “factory hopping,” but China sees the investigations as a way to extend U.S. pressure deep into global supply chains.

Washington has also opened or expanded inquiries into imports linked to forced labor, including some originating in China. Those efforts build on laws that already block goods tied to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region and other areas. Chinese officials regard such steps as politically motivated and a veiled form of export control.

The talks in Paris did not produce any public agreement on those disputes. Nor did officials announce specific tariff reductions or new market access commitments.

Election politics, market anxiety

Instead, both sides stressed process and tone. The Chinese Commerce Ministry described the meetings as a discussion of “trade and economic issues of mutual concern.” State-aligned media in Beijing framed them as an opportunity to inject “certainty and stability” into the global economy.

For the Trump administration, the priority appeared to be preventing an immediate backlash that could hit U.S. exporters — particularly farmers and advanced manufacturers — just months before the November midterm elections.

Bessent, a longtime hedge fund manager who became Trump’s treasury secretary in 2025, has been a central architect of the administration’s tariff-heavy trade approach. In public, he casts tariffs as leverage to secure better terms for “farmers, workers and businesses,” while acknowledging the need to reassure financial markets and keep inflationary pressures in check.

In Paris, he emphasized that the talks were meant to avoid a renewed cycle of retaliation.

“The purpose of these meetings is to prevent any retaliation,” he said, underscoring U.S. concern that Beijing could again target politically sensitive sectors if it decides Trump’s global tariff or new investigations cross its red lines.

He Lifeng, Xi’s top economic lieutenant and the Chinese official charged with managing relations with Washington on trade, stayed largely out of the public eye during the Paris meetings. But his presence highlighted how seriously Beijing takes the challenge of balancing domestic political demands for toughness with a desire to keep export markets open during a period of slowing growth at home.

The Iran war complicates diplomacy

The backdrop to the talks was not only legal and economic but military.

Since late February, U.S. forces have been engaged in strikes against targets in Iran, a conflict that has raised oil prices and heightened risks in the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for global energy flows. Trump has publicly urged China and other major powers to help keep the waterway “open and safe” for shipping.

The war has also complicated scheduling for the planned Trump–Xi summit. Before the Paris talks began, the White House had floated March 31 to April 2 as tentative dates for a state visit to China. Beijing had not formally confirmed. In recent days, Trump has said he may delay the trip to stay in Washington to oversee the Iran campaign.

Bessent told reporters that any postponement would reflect Trump’s responsibilities as “commander in chief … while this war is being prosecuted,” not pressure tactics aimed at Beijing. Still, the convergence of trade talks and wartime diplomacy has inevitably linked the two in the minds of officials and analysts in both capitals.

Allies watch, Congress debates

For U.S. allies, the Paris talks offered a rare window into how Washington and Beijing intend to manage their economic rivalry under these new constraints.

European Union officials have protested Trump’s 15% tariff and frozen ratification of a 2025 trans-Atlantic trade pact. At the same time, they are pressing their own trade and technology disputes with China and are wary of being drawn deeper into a U.S.–China confrontation that could fragment markets and supply chains.

Holding the talks at the OECD — a club of mostly rich democracies that promotes rules-based economic cooperation — underscored the tension between multilateral institutions and the bilateral bargaining now at the center of the world’s two largest economies.

Back in Washington, the Supreme Court’s decision has revived debates in Congress about the balance of power over trade. Lawmakers from both parties have discussed reclaiming more authority after years in which presidents of both parties expanded their unilateral tools.

Trump’s rapid pivot to a global tariff under a different law, and his administration’s willingness to deploy investigations as a complement to formal duties, will likely shape those conversations. So will whatever follows Paris.

What to watch next

For now, the impact of the meetings will show up less in communiqués than in what does not happen: whether China refrains from announcing new tariffs of its own, whether Trump holds off on escalating further, and whether businesses on both sides of the Pacific feel confident enough to keep investing and hiring.

The next test will come if and when Trump and Xi do sit down in Beijing. The “work plan” Bessent and He sketched in Paris points toward potential deliverables — limited tariff relief, clearer guardrails around investigations, perhaps some understanding on energy and shipping amid the Iran war.

None are guaranteed. As the delegations filed out of the OECD building and the camera lights went dark, the real measure of what was accomplished in Paris shifted to container terminals, oil routes and checkout lines from Ohio to Guangdong, where consumers and companies will feel whether a fragile truce can withstand a new tariff world and a shooting war at the same time.