Listeners, welcome to China Tariff News and Tracker for Wednesday, November 19, 2025. The US-China trade front remains in flux, with headline developments over the past weeks confirming just how central tariffs have become to the global economic landscape.

After a year marked by rapid-fire tariff escalation and high-stakes negotiations, the United States and China formalized a major trade agreement at a summit in South Korea at the end of October. In this deal, President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year suspension of additional US tariffs against China while maintaining a base 10% tariff on the majority of Chinese imports. The US also reduced its specialized “fentanyl tariff” from 20% down to 10%. These actions, officially effective as of November 10, 2025, bring the combined IEEPA tariffs on Chinese goods to 20%. According to Plante Moran, the United States also extended more than 170 specific Section 301 tariff exclusions for Chinese products until November 2026, minimizing immediate disruption for key US industries. At the same time, China continued a baseline 10% tariff on US imports and suspended its threatened higher levies. Beijing also removed certain US companies from its “Unreliable Entity List,” a move designed to implement the consensus reached during the Geneva and Busan trade meetings.

Global Trade Alert notes that both sides implemented these measures swiftly, reflecting a temporary thaw in the long-simmering dispute. Significantly, China agreed to suspend export controls and blacklists affecting critical rare-earth minerals, gallium, antimony, and graphite—a relief for high-tech supply chains in the US and Europe. The United States responded by easing export restrictions on certain legacy semiconductors, a development that has already proved vital for the automotive sector.

Looking at the broader trade backdrop, Wikipedia and other sources report that the average applied US tariff rate peaked around 27% earlier this year, a century-high figure, before negotiations and recent agreements lowered that rate to an estimated 17.9% by September. Large product groups, including steel, aluminum, and automotive imports, still face steep tariffs as high as 50% due to the administration’s ongoing use of Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. In the past month, President Trump also threatened a fresh round of 100% tariffs on Chinese goods in retaliation for Chinese export controls but pulled back after concessions were reached.

According to Sullivan & Cromwell’s updated tariffs tracker, Chinese imports now face a 10% general tariff, plus the additional 10% fentanyl-related tariff, totaling 20% for most categories. This stands out as the single highest tariff rate among major US trading partners—even as temporary and product-specific reductions are extended to avoid immediate shocks in critical industries.

For listeners wondering about the longer-term outlook, President Trump and President Xi have both indicated their intention to sustain negotiations heading into 2026. Both countries maintain their willingness to escalate, but global markets have responded favorably to recent stabilization, hoping the current truce will last beyond the next review point in November of next year.

Thanks for tuning in to China Tariff News and Tracker. Make sure to subscribe for tomorrow’s updates and deeper dives into cross-Pacific trade. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

For more check out https://www.quietperiodplease.com/

Avoid ths tariff fee's and check out these deals https://amzn.to/4iaM94Q

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI