President Donald Trump on Monday delayed high U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods from snapping back into place for another 90 days, a White House official told CNBC.
Those tariffs were set to resume after midnight Tuesday. But Trump signed an executive order hours beforehand that extends the deadline until mid-November, according to the official.
The delay was the expected outcome from the latest round of talks between U.S. trade negotiators and their Chinese counterparts, which took place in Stockholm, Sweden, late last month.
If the deadline was not extended, then U.S. duties on China would have shot back up to where they stood in April, when the tariff war between the world’s largest trading nations was at its peak.
At that time, Trump had cranked up blanket tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%, and China had retaliated with 125% duties on U.S. goods.
But the two sides agreed to pause most of those tariffs in May, after negotiators met for the first time in Geneva, Switzerland. The U.S. pared its tariffs back to 30% and China dropped its levies to 10%.
Monday’s extension is the latest example of how Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs have shifted with little prior notice, a dynamic that has made U.S. trade policy unpredictable for many businesses.
Trump has previously announced steep tariffs on countries or specific sectors, only to scale them back, tweak them or pause them days or weeks later.
The “reciprocal tariffs” he initially rolled out in early April, for instance, were quickly paused and then delayed multiple times before taking effect in an altered form last week.
On Sunday, Trump said he wanted China to “quickly quadruple” its orders of U.S. soybeans.
“This is also a way of substantially reducing China’s Trade Deficit with the USA,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Chicago soybean prices rose on Monday. It was not immediately clear if China has agreed to step up its soybean purchases in response to Trump’s post.