Signal October 2025 summit yields one-year mutual suspensions of US and Chinese measures

Summary

At their summit on the sidelines of APEC in Korea on 30 October 2025, the US and Chinese leaders agreed to suspend regulatory measures against each other for one year. Washington deferred for a year its rule automatically extending export controls to firms 50 percent owned by listed entities, while Beijing suspended for a year the extraterritorial application of its rare earth export controls. The two sides also agreed to pause reciprocal port fees on each other's ships for a year, and China later suspended its countersanctions on five Hanwha Ocean subsidiaries in the US for the same period. The report reads the outcome as cross-sector bargaining, in which US concessions on tariffs are traded for the suspension of Chinese rare earth controls. It also points to progress on the illegal drugs and migration issues behind the IEEPA tariffs, which could open the way to further cuts.