U.S., China hold sixth trade talks

Trade talks are back in the familiar U.S.-China groove — meetings happen, both sides call them constructive, and nobody pretends a breakthrough just landed. This latest round in Paris mattered anyway. It kept the channel open between the people who would have to build any real deal, and it happened after the Supreme Court knocked out Trump’s broad emergency-tariff framework in February. That changed the legal terrain, but not the underlying fight. ### Who actually met? The U.S. side was led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. China sent Vice Premier He Lifeng and top trade negotiator Li Chenggang. This was described as the sixth high-level round between the same core group, which tells you something by itself — the relationship is tense, but the personnel and the process are now pretty stable. ### Why Paris again? Paris has become a neutral working venue, basically a place where both sides can talk without turning the meeting itself into a political spectacle. Earlier talks there were held at OECD headquarters and were framed less as a grand bargain than as a way to keep trade friction from spinning out further. That matters because the U.S. and China are not negotiating from trust right now. They are negotiating from damage control. ### Why does “constructive” sound so thin? Because in trade diplomacy, “constructive” often means the meeting did not blow up. It does not mean the hard stuff got solved. Chinese readouts from the March Paris round used a stronger-sounding formula — “candid, in-depth, constructive” — but the substance still looked limited. The point was to keep talking, narrow some disputes, and maybe tee up leader-level decisions later. ### What are they actually arguing about? A lot of it is old trade-war material in updated form. Earlier Paris discussions touched farm goods, managed-trade ideas, Boeing deliveries, U.S. natural gas, and Chinese rare-earth flows to American companies. That mix is revealing. This is not just about tariffs in the abstract. It is about specific chokepoints — who buys what, who ships what, and who can squeeze whom in a supply chain. ### What changed after the Supreme Court ruling? The court’s February 20 decision said the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize Trump’s sweeping tariffs, invalidating the big emergency-based tariff architecture. But the catch is that this did not end tariff politics. It just forced the administration to look for other legal hooks and narrower tools. So the talks now sit in a stranger landscape — one where Washington still wants leverage, but its biggest hammer got taken away. ### Does that make China stronger? A bit, but not cleanly. China gained from seeing the broad U.S. tariff regime weakened in court. But Beijing still has reasons to keep the relationship from freezing over, especially if it wants predictable access for exports and fewer shocks around technology, transport, and commodities. The earlier Paris talks even included signs China was open to more U.S. agricultural purchases, in. ### Is this about a bigger summit? Probably. Reporting around the March talks tied them to possible deliverables for a Trump-Xi meeting, even if summit timing looked uncertain. That is usually how these rounds work — technocrats clear brush, leaders decide whether anything political is worth signing. If the language stays “constructive” and nothing more, that usually means the groundwork is still being laid rather than the deal being closed. ### So what should you take from this? The real story is not that Paris produced a breakthrough. It is that both governments still think the relationship is dangerous enough to require constant maintenance. The tariff war changed shape after the court ruling, but it did not disappear. These talks are the maintenance crew — useful, necessary, and a long way from a settlement.