Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Fri­day float­ed cut­ting tar­iffs on Chi­na from 145% to 80% ahead of a week­end meet­ing among top U.S. and Chi­nese trade of­fi­cials as he looks to deesca­late the trade war be­tween the world’s two largest economies.

Top U.S. of­fi­cials are set to meet with a high-lev­el Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion in Switzer­land in the first ma­jor talks be­tween the na­tions since Trump sparked a trade war with stiff tar­iffs on im­ports.

“80% Tar­iff on Chi­na seems right! Up to Scott B,” Trump wrote on his so­cial me­dia ac­count on Fri­day morn­ing, re­fer­ring to Scott Bessent, his Trea­sury chief, who has been a point per­son on trade. The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent al­so called on Chi­na to open its mar­kets to the U.S., writ­ing: “WOULD BE SO GOOD FOR THEM!!! CLOSED MAR­KETS DON’T WORK ANY­MORE!!!”

Bessent and U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamieson Greer will meet Chi­nese Vice Pre­mier He Lifeng in Gene­va in the most-se­nior known con­ver­sa­tions be­tween the two coun­tries in months, ac­cord­ing to an­nounce­ments this week by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Chi­nese com­merce min­istry. It comes amid grow­ing U.S. mar­ket wor­ry over the im­pact of the tar­iffs on the prices and sup­ply of con­sumer goods.

No coun­try has been hit hard­er by Trump’s trade war than Chi­na, the world’s biggest ex­porter and sec­ond largest econ­o­my. When Trump an­nounced his “Lib­er­a­tion Day” tar­iffs on April 2, Chi­na re­tal­i­at­ed with tar­iffs of its own, a move that Trump viewed as demon­strat­ing a lack of re­spect. The tar­iffs on each oth­er’s goods have been mount­ing since then, with the U.S. tar­iffs against Chi­na now at 145% and Chi­na tar­iffs on the U.S. at 125%.

The U.S. tar­iff in­cludes a 20% rate tied to Trump’s claim that Bei­jing has failed to stem the flow of chem­i­cals used to man­u­fac­ture fen­tanyl, and this por­tion of the tar­iff is un­like­ly to be brought up in this week­end’s talks.

While an 80% tar­iff lev­el on Chi­nese goods would rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion from the cur­rent 145%, it would still be an ex­treme­ly high im­port du­ty that could cre­ate sup­ply chain prob­lems and push up prices.

And even with the re­duc­tion, the tar­iff rate would still be high­er than the com­bined 74% rate on Chi­na that Trump an­nounced at his April 2 “Lib­er­a­tion Day” event.

For Chi­na, ex­perts say Bei­jing would in­sist that any agree­ment from the U.S. side would be cred­i­ble and im­ple­ment­ed.

Trump had pre­vi­ous­ly said that he wouldn’t low­er the tar­iffs against Chi­na to hold sub­stan­tive talks. But he showed signs of soft­en­ing dur­ing an Oval Of­fice ap­pear­ance on Thurs­day, when he said he “could” low­er the 145% rate charged on Chi­nese goods if the week­end talks go well.

“We’re go­ing to see,” Trump said. “Right now, you can’t get any high­er. It’s at 145, so we know it’s com­ing down.”

The pres­i­dent’s team has ac­knowl­edged that the 145% tar­iff was not sus­tain­able, as tax­es at that rate were ef­fec­tive­ly an em­bar­go on any trade be­tween the two coun­tries.

But it re­mains un­clear how Trump can rec­on­cile the con­tra­dic­tions in his stat­ed goals. He wants large amounts of tar­iff rev­enues to off­set his in­come tax cuts, but he al­so wants deals to in­crease mar­ket ac­cess for U.S. goods that would like­ly re­quire low­er tar­iffs. His aides have said he wants to iso­late Chi­na, yet his tar­iffs on oth­er trade part­ners make it dif­fi­cult to cre­ate a durable al­liance on trade.

Trump’s so­cial me­dia post was an­oth­er sign that the pres­i­dent has es­sen­tial­ly been pub­licly ne­go­ti­at­ing with him­self on tar­iffs. He’s start­ed, paused, tweaked and then threat­ened more im­port tax­es, con­stant­ly re­vers­ing him­self while bal­anc­ing his promis­es to ad­dress in­fla­tion with his claims that tar­iffs can tilt the glob­al econ­o­my in Amer­i­ca’s favour. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by SE­UNG MIN KIM and JOSH BOAK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press