President Donald Trump says he wants to create a new “board of trade” to manage commerce with China. Business groups aren’t sure exactly how it would work, but they know they want to get in on the action.
K Street lobbyists are growing increasingly optimistic that the administration’s vague proposal for a body to oversee trade with China, an idea first teased by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in March, could evolve into a major channel for tariff relief between the world’s two largest economies.
It’s the latest signal the administration is pulling back from its all-out trade war on China that occupied much of Trump’s first year in office. Businesses and their lobbyists are now racing to capitalize on that opening.
“It’s pretty clear in our view that the posture in the administration has changed,” said one official from a major industry group, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations. “There is no longer that push to fundamentally overhaul China’s … economic modus operandi.”
The Trump administration is expected to soon release more public guidance on the new body, which will include both U.S. and Chinese officials, and give the public an opportunity to comment on the idea. Trade groups and companies are already preparing to submit their feedback, according to more than half a dozen industry group leaders and CEOs who spoke with POLITICO, and are ramping up private outreach to administration officials, as well.
The agreement to form a “board of trade” was one of the few tangible results from Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing earlier this month. According to the White House, the board will manage trade in what they described as “non-sensitive” goods between the two countries. China’s Commerce Ministry described the proposal more tentatively in its own readout of the summit, saying the two sides had only “agreed in principle” to discuss a broader framework for reciprocal tariff reductions.
The discussions, both countries said, will cover $30 billion or more in exports from each country, representing a sizable chunk of the more than $650 billion worth of U.S.-China trade in goods and services, according to U.S. data from 2024. But additional details are scant.
“To me, it’s a positive step,” Greer said at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday. “My assumption is that there is some amount, some minimum amount on each side that we agree, ‘yeah, we should trade this.’”
Since first introducing the idea, Trump administration officials have floated several concepts tied to the program, describing a system that would slash tariffs on mutually favored categories of goods, while maintaining higher barriers on others, according to three people briefed by U.S. officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss developing plans.
Officials discussed prioritizing low-tech and consumer goods for tariff reductions, the people said, though officials had also floated more traditional managed-trade mechanisms — such as Chinese purchase commitments, quotas and other tools to balance trade flows.
Talks with the Chinese remain fluid, the people stressed, adding that the administration is still ironing out elements of the framework — a signal the clarity industry is searching for is unlikely to come all at once.
“The administration looks forward to engaging more with the business community on this historic policy that reflects our commitment to better manage trade between the U.S. and China,” said a White House official, who was granted anonymity to discuss developing plans. “Further details to come,” the official added.
A key question industry groups are eager to weigh in on: which products will qualify for the new tariff reductions. The administration hasn’t shared details publicly or with the private sector, either, several industry leaders say.
“We don’t know what they mean by ‘non-sensitive goods,’” said Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade at the Consumer Technology Association, which represents the likes of Apple, Google and Meta. “I think Ambassador Greer hasn’t been particularly clear about it, neither have the Chinese.”
Brzytwa said his group plans to push for tariff relief for the “full range” of consumer tech products, including phones, laptops, monitors and video game consoles to qualify under the framework. “Are those non-sensitive? We would argue they are,” Brzytwa said.
Stephen Lamar, president and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, which represents more than 1,100 apparel and footwear brands, said his member companies are also pushing for a broad interpretation of the term.
“‘Non-sensitive’ could mean items that are just simply not made here,” Lamar said, pointing to companies seeking relief for imported manufacturing inputs and equipment used to support U.S. production. “We have a long list there, too.”
One potential starting point: using the list of products that were spared Trump’s first-term duties on China — things like apparel, footwear, toys, and home goods — said Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, which represents companies such as Walmart and Macy’s.
At the CFR event, Greer suggested the administration’s approach toward the world’s second-largest economy is evolving, even as it maintains steep tariffs on China compared with other countries.
“We’ve just come to terms with the fact that there’s not going to be some giant comprehensive reform of the way the Chinese political system works, including all these economic elements of it,” Greer said. “But we can have some managed trade, we can maybe have some reform around the edges of that managed trade in the interest of stability and continued economic peace between our countries.”
Trump’s own trade policies could make it harder to define which products qualify for relief.
Since his first term, the administration has rapidly expanded the definition of “national security” to cover a much broader range of products than what’s typically considered sensitive, said Ed Gresser, vice president and director for trade and global markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
He pointed to Commerce Department decisions that subjected even products like steel coffins to national security tariffs.
“Everything would be a lot simpler if we kept to the idea that national security things are really systemically important and limited, rather than anything can be national security on any given day,” Gresser said.
The administration will have to make some decisions on that front in the next few months if it wants to get ahead of Trump’s next summit with Xi scheduled for September in Washington. Trump has “three and a half months to get this thing up and running,” said Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade negotiator.
“There will be pressure to show progress,” Cutler added, particularly “given how few deliverables came out of this last summit meeting.”
