US urges China to honour Busan trade deal as rare-earth and farm deliveries lag

What did Washington tell Beijing on Friday?

On Friday 6 November 2026, the United States Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, and the United States Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, spoke with the Chinese Vice Premier, He Lifeng, and told Beijing to carry out, fully and immediately, the commitments China made under the trade arrangement agreed in Busan in October 2025. The message was unusually blunt for a routine check-in: Washington wants delivery, not discussion.

“Secretary Bessent emphasized the importance of China fully and immediately implementing its commitments made in Busan and raised concerns about recent Chinese actions,” the Treasury Department said in its readout of the call. “He underscored that continued progress depends on concrete results and that the United States will closely assess China’s implementation of the arrangement.” Greer’s office struck the same note, saying China must take “concrete actions” on its past commitments, “particularly as they relate to agricultural purchases, rare earths, and other critical minerals.”

The Busan arrangement was the truce that paused the tariff war: Washington capped its tariffs on Chinese goods at about 20 percent, while Beijing suspended some of its export controls on rare earths, promised to buy American soybeans and other farm goods, and moved to limit exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl. Its first one-year term was due to end on 10 November; after the September summit in Washington it was extended through January 2027.

What do the numbers actually show?

The farm ledger is the clearest part of the deal, and it is mixed. Under the Busan terms, China pledged to buy 25 million metric tons of American soybeans over the next three years and to raise its purchases of other American farm goods by 17 billion dollars a year from 2026. A Reuters analysis of the trade data found China on track for its soybean target, but it bought only 7.2 billion dollars of other American farm products, including meat and corn, between January and September.

Rare earths are the sharper dispute. American officials say China has delivered only about two-thirds of the rare earths it promised, and that volumes have not risen as Washington expected. Beijing disputes that account. Under Busan, China agreed to suspend the broader export controls it announced in October 2025 and to issue general licences for rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite to American end users and suppliers.

The tariff side is unfinished on both ends. In September the two sides proposed a package of reciprocal tariff cuts worth about 60 billion dollars, covering roughly 17 billion dollars of American farm goods that China imported in 2024, but the plan has not been finalised. And American tariff exemptions for some Chinese products expire on 10 November, with Washington yet to say whether it will extend them.

Which Chinese actions raised Washington’s concern?

The Treasury readout does not say. Bessent “raised concerns about recent Chinese actions,” but neither the Treasury nor the Trade Representative’s office named them, leaving open whether the complaint is about rare-earth volumes, farm purchases, export licences, or something else entirely; and leaving Beijing room to answer without conceding a specific failure.

Three decisions are also still open. Washington has not said whether it will extend the tariff exemptions that expire on 10 November. Neither side has confirmed the meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping in Shenzhen that has been discussed for the weeks ahead. And the 60-billion-dollar package of reciprocal tariff cuts, proposed in September, remains a proposal: the two sides have set up an agricultural working group that is expected to meet before the end of the year, but the tariff cuts themselves are not yet agreed.

Why does a compliance row over Busan matter beyond Washington and Beijing?

Because the Busan arrangement is the floor under the trade between the world’s two largest economies, and floors that crack do not fail quietly. Rare earths sit at the start of the supply chains for electric vehicles, wind turbines, smartphones and weapons systems, so a shortfall in one mineral reaches factories on three continents. Farm sales are the other side of the same coin: American growers planned plantings around the 17-billion-dollar promise, and a year in which only 7.2 billion dollars of non-soybean farm goods moved between January and September is a year of lost income in the American Midwest.

The timing sharpens the stakes. The call came days after the midterm elections, in which the president’s party took heavy losses, and as a possible meeting between Trump, Xi and Putin in Shenzhen hangs in the balance. Markets have already shown how fast confidence can move: artificial-intelligence stocks bounced back only this week after 2.5 trillion dollars was wiped from the Nasdaq. A trade truce that frays would land on a market, and a political class, already rattled; the White House has just reshuffled its top staff after the midterm rout.

Why is the truce fraying at the edges instead of holding?

Because Busan was a truce, not a settlement, and truces are built from promises that each side can read differently. Washington kept its tariffs low and suspended extra restrictions; Beijing suspended export controls and promised purchases. Each concession is conditional on the other’s, so each side can claim, with a straight face, that the other moved first; or failed to move at all. That is the trap in the “30 billion for 30 billion” formula: China says farm purchases wait on tariff cuts; America says tariff cuts wait on farm purchases and rare earths.

The sequencing problem is sharpened by the calendar. The truce’s original one-year term was about to lapse when the September summit extended it to January, which means every compliance argument now happens under a deadline. A deadline concentrates minds, but it also turns every missed shipment into evidence of bad faith; and the disputed two-thirds figure on rare earths is exactly the kind of number that hardens into a narrative before anyone checks the customs data.

What happens if the two sides keep talking past each other?

The first casualty would be the supply chains that routed around the tariff war. Manufacturers that rebuilt sourcing on stable rare-earth licences would face the same scramble as in 2025, and the price of gallium, germanium and graphite, small markets with few suppliers, would move fast. American farmers, who have already seen non-soybean sales run well behind the promise, would plant less and lobby more. And the allies caught between the two giants, above all South Korea and Japan, would be pressed to choose sides in a quarrel they did not start, with the Busan deal itself, agreed on Korean soil, as the awkward exhibit.

The second casualty would be the Shenzhen meeting itself. A leaders’ summit needs a deliverable, and a public row over compliance is a poor advertisement for one. If the meeting slips, the agricultural working group and the 60-billion-dollar tariff package slip with it, and the January expiry stops being a deadline for negotiation and becomes a cliff edge.

What are the dates that will decide whether Busan survives?

Four dates matter. On 10 November, the American tariff exemptions for some Chinese products expire, and Washington must say whether it extends them; the first concrete test of whether the warning is backed by action. Before the end of the year, the agricultural working group the two sides set up is expected to meet, and its first session will show whether the farm ledger can be closed. The proposed meeting between Trump and Xi in Shenzhen, still unconfirmed by Beijing, would be the moment to lock in the 60-billion-dollar package of reciprocal cuts. And on 10 January 2027 the extended truce itself expires; the date by which the two sides must either have a new understanding or watch the tariffs return.

Until then, the measure of Busan is not what was promised in October 2025 but what crosses the Pacific in the weeks ahead: the tonnes of soybeans, the kilograms of rare earths, and the tariff lines that either fall or stay.