There were numerous news stories about the Trump administration last week. First, on May 12, immediately after last week’s contribution was released, the US and China agreed to reduce tariffs on each other by 115 percentage points, lowering US tariffs from 145% to 30% and Chinese tariffs from 125% to 10%.
While most of these reductions are intended to be permanent, 24 percentage points are designated as a 90-day pause.
Last week, before the details were known, I argued that “the U.S. and China are moving toward reducing tariffs,” but the actual outcome exceeded expectations.
We can say that both countries have agreed to a reset as the negative effects of near-embargo level tariffs began to surface.
