The White House announced on Sunday that China has committed to purchasing at least $17 billion worth of American agricultural goods each year through 2028, following a two-day summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. The deal, which applies to 2026 on a proportionate basis, also includes a restoration of market access for US beef and a resumption of poultry imports from American states certified by the US Department of Agriculture as free of avian influenza. Hundreds of US beef processing facilities, including plants operated by giants Tyson and Cargill, will be permitted to export to China once again after Beijing allowed their licences to expire last year.

The announcement builds on an earlier trade truce struck at a Trump-Xi summit in South Korea in October, at which China agreed to resume purchases of US soybeans — a politically sensitive commodity that Beijing had stopped buying altogether after Washington imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods. That earlier commitment included 87 million metric tonnes of soybeans spread over several years. US soybean and beef exports to China had fallen sharply during the trade war: Chinese purchases of US agricultural goods peaked at $38 billion in 2022 but collapsed to just $8 billion in 2025, according to US Department of Agriculture data. Beef imports, worth $2.14 billion in 2022, dropped to under $500 million last year, while poultry exports fell from over $1 billion to $286 million over the same period.

The two governments also agreed to establish two new bilateral bodies — a Board of Trade and a Board of Investment — designed to manage trade in non-sensitive goods and to address investment-related issues. China's Ministry of Commerce confirmed that both sides would work to resolve non-tariff barriers and market access concerns, and said in principle the two sides had agreed to reduce tariffs on specific products at an equivalent scale. Washington, for its part, agreed to