Foie gras, live dolphins and toasters: China and US cut reciprocal tariffs on $30bn of goods

The US and China have released reciprocal lists of goods worth about $30bn each on which they plan to cut tariffs, ranging from consumer electronics and agricultural products, to artificial flowers and live dolphins.The announcements are the latest tack away from the intense trade war between the world’s two largest economies that dominated much of last year, though major strategic products are not included and no timeline has yet been given for the reductions.The US list includes 77 categories of Chinese products including bed linen, garden umbrellas, toasters, fish-hooks and billiard balls. The reciprocal Chinese list features 1,619 types of US product, including a broad range of food such as butter, offal, lobster and foie gras.It also includes coal, scientific devices such as MRI systems, rabbit hair and several types of animals for breeding.“The animal list is certainly eye-catching: donkeys, mules, horses, whales, dolphins and dugongs,” said Han Lin, China country director at the Asia Group.“But I’d read it less as an exotic trade story than as evidence of how granular tariff codes can be.”The news comes days after presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met in Washington for an optics-driven summit aimed at stabilising the two sides’ volatile relationship.“It is a positive step, but not a major breakthrough,” said Zhu Tian, vice-president and co-dean at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai.He noted that the reductions covered a relatively small share of US-China trade, and that other tariffs on more strategic goods remained in place. “Still, it is significant that the two sides are moving from simply avoiding further escalation to actually reducing some tariffs,” he added.The agreement has been brokered through the US-China Board of Trade, set up during Trump’s visit to Beijing in May.Each side has recommended $30bn of non-sensitive trade that “could benefit from more favourable tariff treatment in the future”, the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said. The list represented “improved market access for about 30% of US exports to China”, he added.The Chinese commerce ministry said that levies on more than 90% of the products would be subject to “most-favoured-nation” levels, according to state media.Sensitive product categories such as semiconductors, batteries and electric vehicles are not covered in the $30bn tariff cut lists.US whole soya beans imports – which became a Chinese target during 2025’s trade war – are not on Beijing’s tally, Reuters news agency noted, meaning they still face an additional tariff of 10%.Meanwhile, the Xi-Trump meeting last week yielded only a two-month extension to a wider trade truce first established by the two leaders in Busan, South Korea, last year.“Both sides are carving out non-sensitive trade where cooperation is still possible,” said Han. “It’s managed stabilisation, not a trade reset.”