U.S. and China extend the Busan trade truce to Jan. 10, moving the tariff deadline past the holidays

The United States and China have agreed to extend their trade truce, which was set to expire on Nov. 10, until Jan. 10, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday evening. "We will extend what we call the 'Busan Agreement,'" Bessent said in a Fox News Channel interview, NBC News reported. Reuters and Bloomberg carried the same date.

The announcement followed an unscheduled meeting between Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Washington and came minutes after President Xi Jinping landed for a state visit. Earlier Wednesday, Bessent had only said the U.S. was open to an extension or a bigger deal (our earlier story). Now there is a date.

What is actually being extended

The Busan deal is a bundle of suspensions, not a single tariff. Per the White House fact sheet from November 2025, the pieces with a Nov. 10, 2026 end date on the U.S. side were:

• the suspension of heightened reciprocal tariffs on Chinese imports, with the 10% reciprocal tariff staying in place meanwhile;
• the extension of certain Section 301 tariff exclusions;
• a one-year pause on a Commerce rule extending export controls to affiliates of listed companies;
• a one-year pause on U.S. actions from the Section 301 shipbuilding and maritime investigation.

On China's side, the deal suspended its retaliatory tariffs on U.S. farm goods, paused its October 2025 rare earth export controls and committed it to buy at least 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans in each of 2026, 2027 and 2028.

Bessent's comments did not spell out whether every one of those pieces rolls to Jan. 10 on the same terms. He said it is possible a larger package is agreed by January, or that the current deal is simply rolled again.

The date matters more than it looks

Soybean farmers. The 25-million-ton pledge is a calendar-year number. Under the old deadline, the truce would have expired seven weeks before 2026 ended, so it could lapse before anyone could score China's first full year. Jan. 10 falls after Dec. 31. Bessent also said "some deliverables" have "not been perfect on the Chinese side," and that the U.S. wants to see China be "more fulsome" in the coming months. That makes the year-end soybean tally a live test rather than a footnote.

Importers of Chinese goods. A Nov. 10 cliff sat in the middle of holiday restocking, when a store owner or distributor bringing in goods from China would have faced the risk of the suspended higher tariff snapping back on cargo already on the water. The new date moves that risk past the holiday selling season. It does not remove it: anyone placing first-quarter orders now is still pricing against a deadline, just a later one.

Manufacturers using rare earths or legacy chips. China's general licenses for rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite are part of the same bundle, so their status is now tied to the new date as well.

What comes next

Bessent said further announcements could come from the Chinese delegation in the coming days, including farm purchases and possible financial services deals. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters the two sides could agree lists of goods that get lower tariffs, with Chinese consumer and low-tech goods on one side and U.S. energy, farm goods and possibly medical devices on the other, NBC reported. The calendar tracks the trade data that will show whether purchases follow.

Sources: NBC News; Bloomberg; Reuters; White House fact sheet, Nov. 1, 2025. This is market information, not investment advice.