
China confirmed on Friday details of a trade deal with the United States, saying Washington would lift "restrictive measures" while Beijing will "review and approve" items under export controls.
"It is hoped that the United States and China will meet each other halfway," a spokesperson for the commerce ministry said in a statement.
The White House on Thursday said both sides had reached an understanding on issues including expediting rare earth shipments to the United States.
After talks in Geneva in May, Washington and Beijing agreed to temporarily lower steep tit-for-tat tariffs on each other's products.
China also committed to easing some non-tariff countermeasures, but US officials later accused Beijing of violating the pact and slow-walking export licence approvals for rare earths.
Both sides eventually agreed on a framework to move forward with their Geneva consensus following talks in London this month.
A White House official told AFP on Thursday that President Donald Trump's administration and China had "agreed to an additional understanding for a framework to implement the Geneva agreement." This clarification came after Trump told an event that Washington had "just signed" a deal relating to trade with China, without providing further details.
And on Friday, Beijing confirmed that an agreement had been reached. "Following the London talks, the teams from both sides have maintained close communication," the commerce ministry spokesperson said.
"Recently, with approval, both sides further confirmed the details of the framework," they said, adding that China "will review and approve applications for the export control items that meet the requirements in accordance with the law."
"The US side will correspondingly cancel a series of restrictive measures against China."
'Singed and sealed'
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg TV that the deal was signed earlier this week.
Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details about the agreement.
Lutnick said the deal was “signed and sealed” two days earlier.
It follows initial talks in Geneva in early May that led both sides to postpone massive tariff hikes that were threatening to freeze much trade between the two countries.
Later talks in London set a framework for negotiations and the deal mentioned by Trump appeared to formalize that agreement.
“The president likes to close these deals himself. He's the dealmaker. We're going to have deal after deal,” Lutnick said.
China has not announced any new agreements, but it announced earlier this week that it was speeding up approvals of exports of rare earths, materials used in high-tech products such as electric vehicles. Beijing's limits on exports of rare earths have been a key point of contention.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry said Thursday that Beijing was accelerating review of export license applications for rare earths and had approved “a certain number of compliant applications.”
Export controls of the minerals apparently eclipsed tariffs in the latest round of trade negotiations between Beijing and Washington after China imposed permitting requirements on seven rare earth elements in April, threatening to disrupt production of cars, robots, wind turbines and other high-tech products in the U.S. and around the world.
The agreement struck in May in Geneva called for both sides to scale back punitive tariff hikes imposed as Trump escalated his trade war and sharply raised import duties.
Some higher tariffs, such as those imposed by Washington related to the trade in fentanyl and duties on aluminum and steel, remain in place.
The rapidly shifting policies are taking a toll on both of the world's two largest economies.
The US economy contracted at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March, partly because imports surged as companies and households rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them.
In China, factory profits sank more than 9% from a year earlier in May, with automakers suffering a large share of that drop. They fell more than 1% year-on-year in January-May.
Trump and other US officials have indicated they expect to reach trade deals with many other countries, including India.
“We're going to have deal after deal after deal,” Lutnick said.
(With inputs from AFP and AP)