America's Talking - Trump Says Tariff Truce With China Back on Track

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

(The Center Square) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that U.S. talks with China in London resulted in a tentative deal that still needs China's President Xi Jinping's final approval. The president announced the deal in an all-caps post on Truth Social. "FULL MAGNETS, AND ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS, WILL BE SUPPLIED, UP FRONT, BY CHINA. LIKEWISE, WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!)." Tariffs will stay at levels agreed to in the deal struck in Geneva last month, an administration official told the Wall Street Journal. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_48c15543-fc69-4a2b-8a1b-49333750249a.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. President Donald Trump said the U.S. has reached a tentative deal with China on tariffs, and there had been new court rulings regarding the tariffs. Join me to discuss this is Brett Rowland, the Center Square's tariff guru. Brett, tell our listeners about the tentative agreement with China first and what's next. Okay, so we don't know a ton of details about this yet,

but Trump did announce it Wednesday. He basically said that tariffs would stay the same as the, as they were in the Geneva agreement, which is U.S. 30% or about 55% total, if you consider if you add in Trump's first term tariffs on China, plus 20% for China's role in the fentanyl trade and another 10% for that baseline. Those will stay the same, but the difference here is that is on rare earth. minerals. So we didn't, there was a dust up mid-May about this agreement and they basically, Trump accused China of violating the deal and China accused the U.S. of violating the deal. And then both sides came back together in London. Trump sent his top guys over there.

And then a new deal was reached this week. Now, so we have very few details except that we, Trump has said that the magnets will, the rare earth minerals and magnets will be up front, just how up front they'll be and how long those will last remains to be seen. It's likely that China will keep a pretty tight grip on those, which are used for everything from making consumer electronics to jet fighters and missile guidance systems. So this is key resources here. But one thing that we haven't seen that a lot of people have predicted is higher prices. Dan, have you seen any prices higher in your day-to-day life?

You know, Brad, I can't say that I have. Honestly, I'm not a big shopper and spender. You know, I do get to the grocery store from time to time, et cetera. And I haven't noticed it yet, but experts are saying that it probably is coming. Is that what you're reporting? Yeah. So I talked to an expert yesterday from the Cato Institute, who studies trade, and he said that these are coming. He said, U.S. consumers are going to bear the brunt of these costs

and that we'll pay for them one way or the other. The interesting example that he brought up, especially on China, is he brought up strollers. He's got some kids. He's in the market for strollers. He says about 95% of strollers that are sold in the U.S. are made in China. And he pointed out that strollers have nothing to do with national security or these rare earth minerals. But it's one of those products that we rely on China for and that we'll likely pay more money for, along with hundreds of other consumer products. So I also haven't seen big price increases in my day-to-day life. But I'm told that's going to change and it's going to change in not a good way. Now let's talk about some more recent court rulings. Brett, of course, consumer groups, small businesses, political groups have sued Trump over the tariffs multiple times. And there was a pretty big development this week.

Yeah. So at first, the Court of International Trade said, gave Trump 10 days to unwind the tariffs. Trump immediately appealed. and they got a stay from the federal appeals court. Now, this week, the federal appeals court basically said that stay can continue for a longer period of time and basically ruled that the Trump administration had met the burden to get that stay requested. So I don't think that this brings a lot of relief to anybody who, especially those small business owners who had filed suit, some of them said they were going to close in a matter of weeks if they couldn't get products in

or if they had to pay those higher tariffs. So those businesses are still struggling and they have none of the certainty that they were looking for. In fact, now they've got the U.S. court system involved in the tariff ordeal. So it's certainly not providing them the stability that they wanted. But there is some good news for Trump here. Now, his administration had basically said, if you don't grant us this stay, it's going to unwind months of careful,

delicate diplomatic work in trade negotiations. So they were able to make the case that they should get this play for at least a little longer. Now, the businesses are super unhappy about this because they say a refund is no good for a bankrupt company. They're saying, you know, that's not a way to, if we go out of business, there's nothing we can do. A refund on the tariffs we paid isn't going to help us at that point. So a lot to still be worked out here.

And there's still upcoming deadlines. Trump has some self-imposed deadlines at the end of the month. So we still got a ways to go on this. And that includes, like, with European Union countries, Asian nations, African nations. So there's dozens and dozens, maybe more than 100 of negotiations that are still ongoing. But Trump has said if he can't reach these deals, he's just going to self-impose the tariffs that he wants. Is that right? Yes.

So that was a really interesting point. He said that there's essentially 15 nations that there's still. negotiating with, you know, on a good faith basis, but that many of those other nations, scores of other nations could just get a letter in the mail dictating the terms to them and saying, hey, this is what our tariff's going to be and not even getting a chance to negotiate. Now, most of those countries have a much smaller trade relationship with the U.S., so it may affect them more than it affects consumers here in America, but we'll likely see some some effects of that down the line.

Just how much, though, again, remains to be seen. And with these trade deals, like, none of what we've seen so far, even the UK deal and the China sort of truce, we haven't seen, like, written documents explaining what's exactly in these trade deals. So there's still quite a bit of unknowns here. Thank you for joining us today. Brett. Listeners can keep up with all things tariffs and more at thecenter square.com.