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Perhaps unsurprisingly, I haven’t seen many media outlets report accurately on the “deal” reached between Trump and Xi today, most forgetting to mention crucial aspects of it and almost all failing to contextualize the “47%” tariff figure quoted by Trump. Let me try to detail the deal as accurately as I can, drawing from sources from both sides (on the Chinese side I mostly used a China Ministry of Commerce statement issued today at 3pm Beijing time, so roughly 1 hour and a half after the “deal” was concluded: mofcom.gov.cn/xwfb/xwfyrth/a… and on the U.S. side I used statements by Trump himself and others present in the meeting). The key terms: 1. The U.S. will remove the so-called “50% rule” that it implemented in September for one year, in exchange of which China will suspend its rare earths export controls for one year The removal of the “50% rule” is absolutely key, yet almost no media reported it, only mentioning that China had agreed to suspend its rare earths export controls for one year. Worth mentioning that the removal of the “50% rule” has been confirmed by Bessent himself as of a couple of hours ago (reuters.com/world/china/us-h…) As a reminder the “50% rule” was THE main reason why China retaliated with the rare earths export controls. It was a huge escalation by the U.S. as it effectively increased the number of Chinese companies on the "Entity List" by 14 times (!), from 1,400 companies to 20,000 (nitter.gq/RnaudBertrand/status/1…). Meaning 14 times more Chinese companies cut off from the Western financial system, forbidden to use USD, etc. It was also the key trigger for the Nexperia debacle that’s currently occurring in Europe. The “50% rule” would have put Nexperia on the Entity List, and the U.S. told the Dutch that the only way Nexperia could escape U.S. sanctions was to get rid the Chinese ownership in the company (ft.com/content/db019842-01a9…), hence the Dutch’s move to seize the company away from its Chinese ownership almost simultaneously with the introduction of the “50% rule”. Unclear what will happen in this case now that the 50% rule has been dropped but logic would dictate that the company be given back to its rightful owners. Although, admittedly, expecting European legislators to act based upon logic is a tall order… 2. The US will drop its OVERALL tariffs on China to 47%, meaning that China now benefits from 16% tariffs as part of the "Liberation Day" tariff policy Of course Trump would mention the OVERALL number to make it sound like he didn’t cave on his liberation day tariffs but when one looks into the details, China actually negotiated him down to approximately 16% on his "Liberation Day" tariffs (down from the initial 34% and WAY down from the 125% peak), AND they got the so-called “fentanyl tariff” cut by half on top of that. How so? First of all, before Trump 2.0 even got inaugurated, tariffs on Chinese goods were already standing at a weighted average of 20.7% (source: piie.com/research/piie-chart…). Soon after taking office, in February and March (so before “Liberation Day”), Trump added 20% on top of that in the form of his so-called “fentanyl tariff.” So BEFORE “Liberation Day” the OVERALL tariffs on China were already 40.7%. Then on Liberation Day Trump added a 34% reciprocal tariff on top of that (so 74.7% overall tariffs), which he again escalated to 125% by April 10th after China retaliated. This brought the peak to 145% just from Liberation Day and fentanyl tariffs alone (or 165.7% including the pre-existing tariffs). The fact that the OVERALL rate is now down to 47%, given the fact that the deal includes a 50% reduction on the fentanyl tariff (from 20% down to 10%), means that China has now negotiated the Liberation Day down from 125% to about 16% since 20.7% + 10% fentanyl + 16% Liberation Day is approximately equal to 47% overall tariffs (well, 46.7% to be exactly precise). This means that when it comes to Liberation Day tariffs, China will stand roughly on par with the EU (who are at 15%: policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/ne…) or South Korea (who also will likely be around 15%: bbc.com/news/articles/cly4jz… ). 3. The US will suspend its hostile actions on China’s ships and shipbuilding industry, in exchange of which China will also suspend its retaliatory measures The US has agreed to suspend implementation of its so-called “301 investigation” measures against China's maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industry for one year, which was going to lead to massive port fees in the U.S. for Chinese-built and Chinese-operated vessels. In exchange China will also correspondingly suspend implementation of countermeasures against the US for one year: they had announced that, as retaliation, they too would start charging U.S. ships for docking at Chinese ports (reuters.com/business/autos-t… ) 4. Other parts of the deal TikTok: China mentions they agreed to "properly resolve" the TikTok issue which is probably diplomatic speak to say that it’s not resolved yet. Soybeans: China mentioned that “both sides reached consensus on expanding agricultural product trade” while Trump mentioned that China will buy 'tremendous' amount of soybeans, which all in all probably means that China agreed to resume buying U.S. soybeans (which they had stopped as retaliatory measures as leverage in the trade war). Fentanyl: Both sides agree on "anti-drug cooperation" regarding fentanyl - which is language that’s pretty boilerplate in US-China discussions, so probably nothing new there. “Handling of individual enterprise cases”: there is a pretty opaque language that suggests both sides discussed how to handle specific companies’ issues (Nvidia? Huawei? Nexperia?) and that they “reached consensus” on this. Future Summitry: Trump commits to visiting China in April 2026, with mutual support pledged for China's 2026 APEC hosting and America's G20 summit. This signals both sides expect the relationship to stabilize enough for Xi and Trump to meet several times in person in 2026. All in all, I would say that the key feature of this “deal” is the reciprocity and almost religious balance in every aspect: each concession matched by the other, each suspension mirrored. It shows we're now dealing with peer competitors who can effectively keep each other in check. You can see how immensely things have changed if you contrast this deal with Trump's so-called “Phase 1” agreement from his first term (ustr.gov/phase-one) with its unilateral Chinese commitments to buy American products and enact structural reforms to "rebalance" trade, with the U.S. warning it would “vigilantly monitor” Chinese compliance. All from an era when the US could still essentially dictate terms. None of that unequal framework survives here: instead of Washington trying to reform China based on its interests; all it can now do is learn to coexist with it. It’s still early days though, for instance the deal doesn’t mention fundamental issues such as Taiwan. This is clearly not a grand strategic reset but rather both powers trying to figure out the rules of engagement of our new multipolar reality. Xi Jinping mentioned in his introductory statement in the meeting that the U.S.-China relations was a “giant ship” going through “winds, waves and challenges” that needed to be “steadily sailed forward” by both leaders. That’s pretty much what this meeting was: the winds and waves are still there but at least both sides seem to acknowledge that they're now on the same ship.