U.S., China hold sixth round in Paris

Trade talks are back in the foreground — again. The U.S. and China just finished a sixth round of high-level negotiations in Paris, and the immediate takeaway is simple: the conversation is still alive, but the big breakthrough still is not. That matters because these meetings are now doing two jobs at once. They are trying to keep tariffs and retaliation from spiraling, and they are trying to build enough stability for a possible Trump-Xi meeting later on. ### Who actually met in Paris? The U.S. side was led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. China sent Vice Premier He Lifeng and senior trade negotiator Li Chenggang. The meeting took place over roughly a day and a half in Paris, with the OECD headquarters serving as the venue. Both governments used the same diplomatic word afterward — “constructive.” ### Why Paris, and why now? Paris was basically neutral ground for a working session that sat between crisis management and summit prep. This was the sixth round since the current negotiating track began last year, and it came after a rough stretch in which Washington opened new Section 301 investigations that could be combustible. ### What did they actually talk about? Not just tariffs in the narrow sense. The agenda appears to have included whether to extend existing tariff and non-tariff arrangements, how to handle trade imbalances, and whether to create more formal mechanisms for managing trade and investment disputes. There was also trying to build a framework that could keep future fights from turning into immediate escalation. ### Did anything concrete come out? Publicly, not much. China said the two sides reached initial consensus on some agenda items and would keep talking. The U.S. side signaled the talks were useful and stable, but there was no headline deal, no tariff rollback announcement, and no detailed joint readout laying out all meaningful — but it is not resolution. ### Why does “constructive” sound so vague? Because it is. In trade diplomacy, “constructive” often means the meeting did not blow up. That may sound thin, but with U.S.-China relations, even that has value. Think of it less like signing a peace treaty and more like extending the runway so neither side has to make a hard landing right away. The catch can still sit in the same room