China got more than a lump of coal out of President Xi Jinping's White House meeting with President Trump, with plans to purchase $10 billion metric tons of the resource.
Page F3From§Eachthe matinee edition — 26 September 2026
Xi spends summit pressing Trump to loosen support for Taiwan and Japan, leaves with $30 billion tariff cut
As it ran on the front
You will be told the coal is the American win, and the tonnage does help: ten million tons, on a two-year offtake — offtake, an agreement to take delivery later, which is not a shipment, it is the promise of one. Handsome on a lectern. The tariff cut runs in both directions, mind you. Each country lowers duties on thirty billion dollars of the other's goods. Thirty billion, matched. Not conceded, matched. And the whole of it sits inside an "eight-point consensus", which is a list and not a treaty: nothing ratified, nothing enforceable, eight points. One point opens talks on artificial intelligence and a channel for incidents. A channel. That is a telephone.
And what did the Chinese president do with three days in Washington? Praise, warnings, and wartime history, set against American support for Taiwan and Japan. What he sought was a tilt in the American position on Taiwan and Japan ... and the podium was free, the three days were free, and the week goes into the record as a "tremendous visit."…
…(cont) Someone will say the coal order is the price. The coal is a purchase. The visit was the gift.
At the fence the fox waits. The farmer feeds the fox. The hens sleep.
“Three days in the White House and the trophy is ten million tons of coal — a purchase order, the kind of thing a buyer can slow-walk for two years, while the buyer spent the whole visit working on whether America still stands behind Taiwan and Japan. They cut tariffs on thirty billion each way and filed it as an eight-point consensus, which is a polite way of saying nobody signed a thing you could enforce. Nothing came home to your town out of this week; what got handed out was a hearing on how much two allies are worth.”
“Thirty billion in tariff relief — and that's a win, thirty billion, both directions, because that's what a deal is, both directions. Did I say relief? That's not a word I use, that's your word. And nobody loosened anything on Taiwan; the man talked, we listened, and then he agreed to buy ten million tons of American coal, and coal you can weigh, which is more than you can say for whatever it is you're implying.”
Earlier in this story
- Wronged Americans awarded $3.47 each, their lawyers $30 million, and the fee schedule performed exactly as drafted. By Sterling · the noon edition, 26 September 2026
The receipts
In his talks with President Trump, the Chinese leader used praise, warnings and wartime history to challenge American support for Taiwan and Japan.
The United States and China agreed to slash tariffs on $30 billion in goods after Trump and Xi Jinping's three-day Washington summit this week.
The United States and China have cut several deals during President Donald Trump’s visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington, D.C., this week, including finalizing a $30 billion tariff agreement, a two-year coal deal, and advancing artificial intelligence talks. Trump and Xi have had a complicated relationship throughout…
The U.S. and China agreed to lower tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods each country imports from the other and launch new talks on artificial intelligence (AI) following President Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The agreements were part of an eight-point consensus reached during Xi’s three-day state visit to…
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met this week as questions linger over the U.S. war in Iran, China's purchase of Iranian oil and the future of artificial intelligence development.
· The U.S. and China agree to a trade deal in which, for 90 days, U.S. tariffs on most Chinese goods will drop from 145% to 30%, while China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods will drop from 125% to 10 from the morgue, 12 May 2025
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.