Trump Extends US-China Tariff Truce: 30% Rates Maintained as Trade Tensions Persist Through November 2025

Listeners, welcome back to China Tariff News and Tracker, your go-to for the latest updates on U.S.-China tariffs and trade policy. It’s August 15, 2025, and there’s plenty happening on the tariff front, including big moves by the Trump administration that continue to shape global supply chains and international trade negotiations. The headline today is that President Donald Trump, on August 11, signed an executive order extending the temporary U.S.-China tariff truce for another 90 days, pushing the deadline to November 10, 2025. This agreement keeps the current rates in place: a 30 percent tariff on Chinese goods entering the U.S., and a 10 percent tariff on American goods headed into China. This move prevents what analysts had called a “de facto trade embargo”—tariffs could have skyrocketed to as high as 145 percent on Chinese imports and 125 percent on U.S. exports if the truce had expired, according to coverage from Reuters and several industry briefings. Flexport reports that these rates, forged in May during high-level talks, were initially a 90-day pause meant to tamp down the escalating tariff war, but now reflect intense ongoing negotiations. China’s Ministry of Commerce simultaneously announced that it would suspend additional tariffs, keeping to that 10 percent rate for the next three months. Under this current framework, the combined tariffs on Chinese goods were reduced from a potential 145 percent down to 30 percent. Of that 30 percent, 20 points are attributed to what’s called a “fentanyl-related surcharge” and 10 percent is the new baseline reciprocal tariff introduced by President Trump earlier this year. The Wharton School’s real-time tariff tracker highlights the impact: China faces the highest effective tariff rate among all U.S. trading partners, reaching nearly 40 percent in June 2025. U.S. customs revenue from these new tariffs has surged—raising over 58 billion dollars since January. Behind these economic headlines lies a deeper shift: Trump’s move marks a departure from decades of product-specific, negotiated tariffs to country-level, flat-rate tariffs, abandoning the traditional most-favored-nation principle. The only country exempt from Trump’s blanket tariff hikes, so far, remains China. Analysts at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation suggest this is because China is uniquely capable of retaliating in ways that hurt the U.S.—not just with tariffs, but by squeezing supply chains, especially in rare earth minerals crucial for tech and defense. If the U.S. and China fail to reach further agreement by November 10, 2025, Washington has indicated it will reinstate a 34 percent “reciprocal tariff” atop the current stack, potentially catapulting total tariffs on Chinese goods to above 70 percent—a level most industries say is unsustainable. These developments are pushing U.S. manufacturers and contractors to brace for higher prices and continued supply chain volatility. The Trump administration is betting This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.