U.S. and China Hold First Trade Council Meeting With $60 Billion Tariff Cuts Still Unfinished

Economic Warfare & Trade Policy › Trade & tariffs

Featured image: The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, in a May 2023 file photo. Photo: EditQ, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped to 16:9.

China and the United States held the first meeting of their new US-China trade council on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, by video link, China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday. Officials discussed tariff cuts, a reciprocal “$30 billion-for-$30 billion” tariff-reduction arrangement and agricultural trade, the ministry said, according to Reuters. The ministry did not say whether any agreements were reached.

Package size, farm figures and the Thursday meeting are from Reuters reporting, including a Nov. 2 analysis of customs data. The Friday video meeting was first described in a Commerce Ministry statement issued Saturday.

What the first council session covered

The council is a new channel under the two countries’ economic and trade consultation mechanism. A Xinhua report carried on the Chinese government’s English-language website said China and the United States agreed in May 2026 to set the council up, and that Friday’s session was held by video. !Unverified claim, Xinhua (Chinese state media) Reuters, citing the ministry, also reported that the meeting was the council’s first and that it took place on Friday.

In Saturday’s statement, the ministry said the two sides held “candid, in-depth and constructive exchanges on implementing the outcomes of previous China-US economic and trade talks, including tariffs, a reciprocal ‘$30 billion-for-$30 billion’ tariff-cut arrangement, agricultural trade and other issues of mutual concern.” Reuters published that wording. The ministry added that both sides would keep using the council to address trade concerns, expand cooperation and reduce outstanding issues. It did not list product-by-product decisions, a timetable, or a signed text.

The session is a follow-up to talks earlier this year, not a first attempt to discuss farm purchases. On Nov. 8, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer pressed China’s He Lifeng on farm purchases and rare-earth commitments. Friday’s meeting moved that agenda into the council itself, still without a public announcement that the tariff package had been put into effect.

The $60 billion tariff plan is still unfinished

After a September summit in Washington between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump, the two sides proposed a $60 billion package of reciprocal tariff cuts, Reuters reported. That package included roughly $17 billion worth of U.S. farm goods that China imported in 2024. The plan has not been finalized.

The ministry’s reference to a reciprocal $30 billion-for-$30 billion arrangement matches the two halves of that $60 billion total. Beijing has repeatedly urged Washington to implement the $60 billion tariff-reduction deal and has called it a prerequisite for increasing purchases of U.S. farm goods, Reuters reported. The Friday statement did not say that implementation had begun.

Those unfinished cuts sit inside a wider U.S.-China trade war over tariffs and farm trade. They also sit against a year of very large overall goods flows: China’s goods trade surplus has already passed $1 trillion with two months left in 2026, after October imports jumped. High aggregate trade volumes do not, by themselves, show that the farm-purchase pledge is being met. The pledge covers a narrower set of U.S. agricultural goods and was written as a separate commitment.

By the numbers: farm purchases trail the $17 billion pledge

In May, the White House said Beijing agreed to buy $17 billion of U.S. agricultural goods annually from 2026, with this year’s target prorated, a Reuters analysis published on Nov. 2 reported. Those purchases were on top of a commitment, made in October 2025, to buy U.S. soybeans. Reuters said China is on track to hit the soybean target. It said China bought $7.2 billion of the other agricultural goods — from meat to corn — from January through September, the lowest total for that nine-month stretch since 2019, during the first trade war.

By The Boston Report’s calculation from those Reuters figures, $7.2 billion is 42.4% of the $17 billion annual headline figure, leaving $9.8 billion if the full annual total were still to be filled in the remaining months of 2026. That arithmetic is not a finding that China has missed a deadline. Reuters reported that it is unclear whether Beijing is in breach, because the White House has not said whether the clock began after the May announcement or starts only once the proposed tariff cuts have been finalized. The U.S. Department of Agriculture referred questions about the prorating schedule to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The USTR, the White House and China’s Ministry of Commerce did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on that analysis.

Even a late pickup would face constraints that Reuters described from market and industry sources. Chinese demand is weak in several categories, and U.S. cargoes face competition. At its 2021 peak, China imported $5.6 billion of U.S. corn, almost 20 million metric tons; COFCO Futures later forecast about 900,000 tons of U.S. corn for the 2026/27 marketing year, citing ample domestic supply. U.S. sorghum exports to China reached about 3.7 million tons through August, higher than a year earlier, but sales had dried up over the following four months, Reuters reported, as Brazil shipped 1.7 million tons to China this year with nearly 1 million more planned. U.S. meat faces a domestic glut in pork and chicken in China and high U.S. beef prices; the U.S. Meat Export Federation said about half of U.S. fed-cattle slaughter capacity is ineligible to export to China.

The Boston Report checked ImportGenius, a U.S. and international customs and bill-of-lading database, on Nov. 15, 2026. The public site did not display a usable set of 2026 U.S.-to-China agricultural shipment records for this article. The $7.2 billion figure above is from Reuters’ analysis of customs data, which measures declared trade values. Those records are not, by themselves, proof of a legal breach of the May pledge.

What comes next in Shenzhen

The White House said Trump will meet Xi on Thursday, Nov. 19, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shenzhen. That meeting is also part of a broader week of leader-level contacts; The Boston Report has separately reported plans for a possible Trump-Xi-Putin meeting at APEC in Shenzhen. Friday’s trade council session was a working-level step ahead of those talks, not a substitute for them.

The test of the council is implementation. The $60 billion reciprocal tariff package has been described since September and was on the agenda again on Friday, but Reuters reported that it has yet to be finalized. Chinese purchases of U.S. farm goods other than soybeans were, as of the Nov. 2 customs analysis, on track for a seven-year low. Until the two governments publish a start date, a product list, or new purchase figures, those two facts — an unfinished tariff package and a $7.2 billion non-soy tally through September — are the measurable record the first council meeting left in public view.

Sources

• Reuters, via CNBC: “China, US discuss tariffs, farm trade ahead of Xi-Trump meeting,” Nov. 14, 2026
• Reuters, via Investing.com: “China’s slow buying of US farm goods tests $17 billion trade pledge,” Nov. 2, 2026
• Xinhua, via english.www.gov.cn: “China, U.S. hold first meeting of trade council under economic, trade consultation mechanism,” Nov. 14, 2026
• Bloomberg Law: “China, US Discuss Tariffs in First Meeting of Trade Council,” Nov. 14, 2026
• ImportGenius: public trade-records database, checked Nov. 15, 2026 (no usable public 2026 U.S.-to-China agricultural bill-of-lading set was available for this article)