The United States and China extended their tariff truce for another 90 days in August 2025, preventing a scheduled return to sharply higher additional duties while negotiators continued talks over trade, technology and economic-security disputes.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 11, 2025 continuing the suspension until 12:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on November 10, 2025. China agreed to a corresponding extension under the two governments' Stockholm trade statement.
What the 90-day US-China tariff extension changed
The agreement did not eliminate the new tariffs introduced during the 2025 dispute. Instead, the United States continued to suspend 24 percentage points of the country-specific "reciprocal" tariff imposed on Chinese goods while retaining a 10% additional reciprocal tariff. China likewise continued to suspend 24 percentage points of its corresponding additional tariff on US goods while retaining a 10% additional rate.
That distinction matters because the headline tariff rate on Chinese goods entering the United States could be higher than 10%. A separate US tariff linked by the Trump administration to the synthetic-opioid supply chain had been raised to 20% in March 2025. As a result, many covered Chinese imports faced 30 percentage points of new US duties from those two measures combined, before accounting for any pre-existing Section 301 tariffs or other product-specific duties.
The August 11 joint statement followed negotiations in Geneva in May, London in June and Stockholm in late July. It maintained the tariff structure created after the Geneva talks rather than allowing the April escalation to return.
How the tariff dispute reached triple-digit rates
The two countries had escalated their trade measures rapidly in April 2025. The United States raised its country-specific reciprocal tariff on China to 125%. Combined with the separate 20% fentanyl-related tariff, that produced the widely cited 145% additional US tariff level for many covered Chinese products, although some goods were subject to different treatment or additional pre-existing duties.
China, meanwhile, raised retaliatory tariffs on US goods to 125% during the escalation.
The Geneva agreement announced on May 12 sharply reduced the new reciprocal measures. The United States suspended 24 percentage points of its 34% reciprocal tariff and removed the later increases that had pushed that component to 125%, leaving a 10% reciprocal tariff. China made a corresponding reduction and retained a 10% additional tariff on US goods.
Why both sides wanted more negotiating time
The August extension kept negotiations open on several issues with direct consequences for businesses and global supply chains. The White House said discussions were aimed at trade reciprocity, market access for US exporters and economic and national-security concerns. Chinese officials continued to call for the removal of US trade restrictions and argued that economic cooperation would benefit businesses in both countries.
The negotiations also intersected with disputes over China's rare-earth and critical-mineral export policies, US controls on sales of advanced technology to China, agricultural trade and other market-access issues.
For companies importing from China or selling into the Chinese market, the 90-day extension reduced the immediate risk of a sudden return to the April tariff levels, but it did not provide a permanent tariff structure. Businesses still had to plan inventory, sourcing and pricing around the possibility that duties could change again after the new deadline.
The scale of the US-China goods trade
The commercial relationship remained large despite the tariff conflict. According to US Census Bureau goods-trade data, the United States imported about $440.3 billion of goods from China in 2024 and exported about $143.3 billion to China. That produced a US goods trade deficit of approximately $297.0 billion.
Trade weakened substantially during the first half of 2025. Census data show US goods imports from China totaled about $167.6 billion from January through June, down roughly 15.5% from about $198.4 billion in the same period of 2024.
The June comparison was even sharper: US goods imports from China fell to about $18.9 billion in June 2025 from about $34.2 billion in June 2024, a decline of approximately 44.7%.
US goods exports to China also declined. They totaled about $55.8 billion in the first six months of 2025 compared with roughly $71.0 billion during the same period in 2024, a decrease of about 21.4%.
Why tariff uncertainty matters for businesses
Tariffs are taxes collected on imported goods, and their economic effects depend on how importers, suppliers and customers respond. Companies may absorb some of the additional cost, negotiate lower supplier prices, shift sourcing to other countries or pass some of the cost to customers.
That creates a planning problem when tariff rates can change within months. Importers must make purchasing and shipping decisions well before products arrive, while retailers and manufacturers need to set prices and manage inventories without knowing whether current duty rates will still apply later in the year.
For smaller businesses with fewer suppliers and less bargaining power, repeated changes can be particularly difficult because moving production or redesigning a supply chain can take months or years.
Semiconductors added another layer to the dispute
Technology trade remained a separate but closely connected source of tension. US export controls had restricted the sale of advanced semiconductor products to China, while Washington and Beijing were also negotiating over broader technology and national-security issues.
In August 2025, Reuters reported that Nvidia and AMD had agreed to give the US government 15% of revenue from sales to China of certain chips as part of arrangements connected to export licenses. The products identified in reporting included Nvidia's H20 and AMD's MI308. The unusual arrangement drew criticism and questions from some policy experts and lawmakers over how export controls and national-security restrictions should be administered.
The chip issue illustrated why the broader negotiations extended beyond tariffs. Semiconductor access, critical minerals and export restrictions increasingly affected both countries' technology industries and the global supply chains supporting them.
What businesses were watching next
At the time of the August extension, the November 10 deadline became the next major decision point. Businesses were watching whether the negotiations would produce a longer-lasting tariff arrangement, further market-access commitments, changes to technology restrictions or another temporary extension.
The most important practical issue was not simply whether the truce continued, but which layers of tariffs and trade restrictions would remain. The 10% reciprocal tariff was only one component of US duties on Chinese goods, and some products were also affected by the separate fentanyl-related tariff, Section 301 measures and product-specific trade rules.
Later context
The August agreement was not the final step in the negotiations. In November 2025, the United States announced a further economic and trade arrangement with China. The US government subsequently extended the suspension of the heightened reciprocal tariff through November 10, 2026, while retaining a 10% reciprocal tariff, and it reduced the fentanyl-related tariff on Chinese imports by 10 percentage points effective November 10, 2025.
This later agreement does not change what businesses faced when the August 2025 truce was announced, but it shows that the November deadline ultimately led to another negotiated change rather than an automatic return to the April tariff escalation.
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