Trump Administration Live Updates: U.S. Gives Mexico More Time to Meet Demands to Avoid Tariffs

The United States and China have shown their willingness to repeatedly escalate trade tensions and hurt companies that do business across the Pacific, before walking back measures and striking a truce. But the truces have quickly crumbled, calling into question how durable a new agreement would be.

Speaking on ABC News on Sunday, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said American and Chinese negotiators who met in Malaysia over the weekend had “reached a substantial framework” for the two leaders to discuss when they meet in South Korea on Thursday.

He said that a 100 percent increase in United States tariffs on Chinese exports scheduled for Nov. 1 had been averted, and that China had agreed to delay a rare earths licensing system “for a year while they reexamine it.” The Chinese also agreed to help the United States stop the flow of chemical ingredients used to make illicit fentanyl, and make “substantial agriculture purchases for U.S. farmers,” Mr. Bessent said.

On social media, Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture, praised the planned soybean purchases as “big news.” She added, “China’s commitment to make substantial purchases of U.S. soybeans brings the market BACK into balance and secures years of prosperity for American producers.”

But critics said the Trump administration appeared to be claiming credit for solving a crisis of its own making. China stopped its soybean purchases earlier this year, after it put a tariff on American soybeans in retaliation for the tariffs Mr. Trump had placed on Chinese products in April.

Though the Chinese government had clearly been developing its licensing system for rare earths for some time, it chose to enlarge the system following Mr. Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. Beijing further expanded the system this month, after the United States put new restrictions on providing technology to thousands of additional Chinese companies.

Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, a consultancy, said the Trump administration had been pursuing a policy of “escalating to de-escalate,” which he called “a losing strategy.” He pointed out that this was the fifth meeting of trade talks that had been dominated by China’s curbs on rare earths.

“Both sides can hurt each other,” Mr. Triolo said. “All it’s done is reduce market share for companies across the board.”

Mr. Trump’s deal-making is famously unpredictable, and his meeting with Mr. Xi could result in other deals. Chinese officials have floated the possibility of more substantial purchases of U.S. products, as well as greater Chinese investment in the United States. In another interview, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Bessent said the two sides would probably discuss “more balanced trade,” as well as “President Trump’s global peace plan.”

But talks have been much less intensive than in Mr. Trump’s first term, when negotiators went back and forth for months to hammer out a 90-page trade agreement on issues ranging from intellectual property and banking to agriculture. On Friday, the Trump administration said it was beginning an investigation into China’s failure to comply with the terms of that agreement.

Jonathan A. Czin, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, pointed out that Mr. Xi was coming to the meeting after announcing China’s next five-year plan, which calls for intensifying the country’s focus on manufacturing and technology. Those plans run counter to longstanding U.S. concerns about China’s unfair trade practices, which ostensibly started their trade clash, he said. But those topics appeared to be largely absent from the agenda.

“It’s really striking to me that, not only are they not even discussing it, we’re discussing one issue at a time,” Mr. Czin said. “We’re talking about TikTok, or about soybeans, these kind of sectoral or even firm-specific issues, rather than talking about the big, meaty, substantive issue that may have been at the heart of this at the outset.”

In July, Mr. Trump threatened to put 30 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico, but then gave the country a 90-day reprieve so it could negotiate with the United States. That reprieve was set to expire on Saturday. When the two presidents spoke Saturday, Ms. Sheinbaum said, they agreed to give Mexico more time to address U.S. demands to lower what it called nontariff barriers to trade.

The White House is asking Mexico to remove what it calls 54 barriers to trade that aren’t tariffs, such as disputes about intellectual property. Ms. Sheinbaum said Monday in her daily news conference that she and Mr. Trump agreed to give it “a few more weeks” to finalize that pending issue.

Mr. Trump has already placed a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports that don’t comply with the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement. Since he did so, Mexican companies have made changes so their goods comply with the agreement and avoid the tariffs. Mexican officials have said nearly 90 percent of the country’s exports to the United States now comply and thus are not subject to the levies.

It is unclear if Mr. Trump’s threatened 30 percent tariffs would constitute an increase of five percentage points on the existing tariffs or an entirely new set of levies.

Mexico and the United States are each other’s largest trading partners. Unlike Canada, to which Mr. Trump has taken an increasingly bellicose approach, Mexico has been able to forge a collaborative relationship with the Trump administration, in part because Mexico has made major concessions on security and immigration to appease Mr. Trump.

The Constitution sets a two-term limit for presidents, but Mr. Trump and his supporters have increasingly floated the possibility of finding a way to circumvent the 22nd Amendment, which states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice,” regardless of whether the terms are consecutive.

In discussing his health, Mr. Trump offered a small new detail about the tests that the White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the president had received during a recent visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“I gave you the full results,” Mr. Trump said, mischaracterizing the summary that was released by his physician. The summary did not say that Mr. Trump had an M.R.I. scan and had few details on what testing the president had undergone. When asked why he had undergone an M.R.I., the president said, “you could ask the doctors.” Magnetic resonance imaging, a noninvasive technology that creates detailed images of the inside of the body, is often used for disease detection and monitoring, or to detect bone or joint abnormalities.

At 79, Mr. Trump is the oldest person to be elected president, and he would be well into his 80s by the end of his second term. Mr. Trump’s critics have speculated about his health in recent months after he repeatedly appeared on camera with bruises on the back of his hand and swollen ankles.

Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s press secretary, said at the time that his visit to Walter Reed earlier this month was part of a routine annual checkup, though he had already undergone a physical in April. Shortly after his latest visit, he traveled to the Middle East.

As he fielded questions on Monday, Mr. Trump seemed intent on presenting himself as the picture of physical and mental health, claiming, without evidence, that two Democratic lawmakers, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, would not “pass” the cognitive health exams he has taken at Walter Reed. He did not say whether he took those exams during his last visit.

“Let A.O.C. go against Trump,” Mr. Trump said, talking about himself as a candidate in a hypothetical future presidential race. “Let Jasmine go against Trump. The first couple of questions are easy: a tiger, an elephant, a giraffe. When you get up to about five or six, then you get up to 10 and 20 and 25, they couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.”

Mr. Trump didn’t specify which test he was talking about.

Last week, Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former strategist, said that he was part of “a plan” to help the president get elected to a third term.

“Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” he said.

Speaking in Malaysia on Monday, Mr. Carney said that he will meet with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, later this week at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea.

Relations between China and Canada have been in steady decline since 2018, when Canada detained a Chinese executive on behalf of the United States. Days later, the Chinese authorities detained two Canadian men, holding them for two and a half years. (All three were subsequently released in what was widely viewed as a prisoner swap.)

Mr. Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, had a rocky relationship with Mr. Xi. In 2022, Mr. Xi pulled Mr. Trudeau aside in front of cameras at a Group of 20 meeting and berated him — accusing the Canadian leader of leaking a conversation they had to the news media.

The former central banker of England and Canada and a business executive, Mr. Carney has decades of experience in dealing with the Chinese establishment.

He was circumspect on Monday about what the meeting with Mr. Xi may achieve.

“It is a country with whom we had no senior level contact for seven years,” Mr. Carney said, referring to China, in remarks to reporters in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.

“We’re starting from a very low base and can move very substantially before we start to get to sensitive areas,” he added.

There was no immediate comment from the Chinese government about a meeting between Mr. Xi and Mr. Carney.

Canada is working on an end-of-year deadline to reach a free-trade agreement with the ASEAN nations, a negotiation that Mr. Carney has made a priority as he grapples with American tariffs.

China imposed tariffs on canola oil seeds and other canola products from Canada, which are major exports for farmers in that country. Those levies were linked to the 100 percent duties that Canada put on imports of Chinese electric vehicles.

Beijing is pushing for an end to the electric vehicle tariffs in exchange for dropping its canola tariff. Such a move would be likely to further inflame trade tensions with Mr. Trump.