Date: Feb 26, 2019
US President Donald Trump has postponed his administration’s plans to increase the current import duties on $200 billion-worth of Chinese goods, de-escalating the trade tensions between the two countries.“I will be delaying the US increase in tariffs scheduled for March 1,” Trump announced via social media on Sunday February 24.
According to Trump, there has been “substantial progress in our trade talks with China on important structural issues including intellectual property protection, technology transfer, agriculture, services, currency, and many other issues.”
The tariffs, which took effect on September 24 at a rate of 10%, were set to increase to 25% unless the two countries reached a deal.
There has been neither an agreement nor a new deadline given, but Trump has proposed a summit with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to conclude a deal, if both sides make “additional progress.”
The minor metals and ferro-alloys that have escaped a rise in import tariffs – at least temporarily – are bismuth, cadmium, gallium, germanium, germanium dioxide, selenium, tellurium, silicon, magnesium, mercury, arsenic, rhenium, hafnium, ferro-tungsten, ferro-vanadium, ferro-silicon, ferro-manganese, vanadium pentoxide, titanium, cobalt sulfate, cobalt metal and cobalt tetroxide.
