China Suspends Additional Tariffs On US-Made Vehicles For 3 Months

The Chinese Finance Ministry announced that they will suspend additional tariffs on US-made vehicles and car parts for three months, starting from January 1, 2019.

The move follows a truce in the trade war between USA and China, as the two countries are set to negotiate a new trade deal.

China will suspend its 25 percent tariff on 144 vehicle and car part items, as well as its 5 percent tariffs on a further 67 auto items between January 1 and March 31, Reuters reports. That means that US-made vehicles will be subjected to a 15 percent tariff instead of the previous 40 percent.

China’s Finance Ministry hopes that the two countries will speed up their negotiations in order to remove all of the additional tariffs on each other’s goods.

The tariff suspension was announced after China’s first major purchase of US soybeans since President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to the truce, during talks on trade on December 1.

The truce between the two countries paused USA’s plan to increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods on January 1.

China’s move to lift the additional tariffs on US-made vehicles was announced earlier by White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow but at the time nothing was set on paper.