US-China Pact to Form Trade & Investment Councils and Slash Select Tariffs After Trump-Xi Summit

Managed-trade mechanisms have surfaced before when a rising Asian power unsettled U.S. industries—the 1985 Plaza Accord and the 1989 U.S.–Japan Structural Impediments Initiative set up similar councils aimed at smoothing frictions but ultimately shifted little of the structural trade imbalance. Establishing boards rather than relying on multilateral WTO channels signals a return to bilateral, state-steered bargaining that has waxed and waned since Nixon’s 1972 opening to China. If the bodies evolve into durable forums, they could temper the decoupling trend of the 2020-25 tariff spiral; if they stall, they may be remembered like the U.S.–Japan accords—symbolic pauses before renewed competition. Over a 100-year horizon the episode matters less for the immediate soybean or jet orders than for testing whether the two largest economies can institutionalize dispute management without a shooting war or a complete economic split.