Washington (AFP) — United States President Donald Trump on Monday ordered a delay in the reimposition of higher tariffs on Chinese goods, hours before a trade truce between Washington and Beijing was due to expire.

The White House’s halt on steeper tariffs will be in place until 10 November.

“I have just signed an Executive Order that will extend the Tariff Suspension on China for another 90 days,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. The truce on steeper levies had been due to expire Tuesday.

While the United States and China slapped escalating tariffs on each other’s products this year, bringing them to prohibitive triple-digit levels and snarling trade, both countries in May agreed to temporarily lower them.

As part of their May truce, fresh US tariffs targeting China were reduced to 30 percent and the corresponding level from China was cut to 10 percent. Those rates will now hold until November — or whenever a deal is cut before then.

Around the same time that Trump confirmed the new extension, Chinese state media Xinhua news agency published a joint statement from US-China talks in Stockholm saying it would also extend its side of the truce.

China will continue suspending its earlier tariff hike for 90 days starting 12 August while retaining a 10-percent duty, the report said.

It would also “take or maintain necessary measures to suspend or remove non-tariff countermeasures against the United States, as agreed in the Geneva joint declaration,” Xinhua reported.

In the executive order posted Monday to its website, the White House reiterated its position that there are “large and persistent annual US goods trade deficits” and they “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.”

The order acknowledged Washington’s ongoing discussions with Beijing “to address the lack of trade reciprocity in our economic relationship” and noted that China has continued to “take significant steps toward remedying” the US complaints.

“Beijing will be happy to keep the US-China negotiation going, but it is unlikely to make concessions,” warned William Yang, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.

He believes China sees its leverage over rare earth exports as a strong one, and that Beijing will likely use it to pressure Washington.

US-China Business Council president Sean Stein said the current extension is “critical to give the two governments time to negotiate an agreement” providing much-needed certainty for companies to make plans.

A trade deal, in turn, would “pave the way for a Trump-Xi summit this fall,” said Asia Society Policy Institute senior vice president Wendy Cutler.

But Cutler, herself a former US trade official, said: “This will be far from a walk in the park.”