Business & Economics
Trump Extends US-China Tariff Truce to Nov. 10, Avoiding Snap-Back to 145 % Duties
With barely hours to spare on 11 Aug 2025, President Trump signed an executive order granting a fresh 90-day reprieve that keeps U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports at 30 % and Chinese tariffs at 10 %, forestalling the scheduled return to triple-digit rates.
Focusing Facts
- The order, signed 11 Aug 2025, shifts the tariff-hike trigger date from 12:01 a.m. ET 12 Aug to 12:01 a.m. ET 10 Nov 2025.
- Absent the extension, U.S. duties would have jumped to 145 % and China’s to 125 %, levels economists warned would amount to a de-facto trade embargo.
- As part of the détente, Nvidia and AMD secured export licences in exchange for remitting 15 % of China-related AI-chip revenue to the U.S. Treasury.
Context
Great-power tariff brinkmanship is hardly new: the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act raised U.S. duties to an average 40 %, prompting cascading retaliation that shrank world trade by a third, while Nixon’s 10 % “import surcharge” in 1971 was lifted only after partners agreed to currency realignments. Trump’s 90-day rolling truces echo those episodes—short, coercive pauses meant to wring concessions—but this time the dispute is intertwined with strategic tech controls and energy geopolitics, not just trade balances. The move underscores a structural shift from multilateral rule-making (WTO, 1995) toward ad-hoc, revenue-generating ‘tariff diplomacy’ where executive orders, not congressional statutes, set the terms. Over a century horizon, such episodic suspensions signal an erosion of the post-1945 liberal trading system and the rise of managed, securitized commerce; each extension buys time but deepens uncertainty that pushes firms to re-route supply chains and accelerates technological bifurcation between U.S. and Chinese ecosystems. Whether this moment becomes a footnote like Nixon’s surcharge or a hinge toward permanent bloc-based trade will depend less on soybean purchases than on whether either side can craft institutions more durable than 90-day stopgaps.
Perspectives
Left leaning media
e.g., The Guardian, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Daily Beast — See the 90-day tariff delay as another example of Trump’s erratic trade tactics that heighten economic uncertainty and consumer costs while yielding few concrete gains. Their coverage foregrounds chaos and price pain, fitting an anti-Trump narrative that may downplay any strategic leverage or successes Trump claims from the pause.
Global wire and public-service broadcasters
e.g., Reuters, BBC, NBC News — Frame the extension as a practical step that averts a near-embargo and buys negotiators time, emphasizing the timeline, rates and diplomatic choreography on both sides. Reliance on official statements and procedural language can make the move look technocratic and reasonable, muting discussion of deeper political motives or social costs.
Business & financial outlets
e.g., Yahoo! Finance, CBS News — Highlight the delay as market-relevant relief for companies and investors, noting chip-maker exemptions and the prospect of a Xi-Trump meeting as positives for commerce. Their investor-centric lens tends to treat the pause as good news for stocks and supply chains, giving limited scrutiny to labor, consumer or geopolitical downsides.