President Trump is resetting on tariffs after almost six weeks of turmoil that threatened to upend his second term.

A Monday announcement that the United States and China had come to an agreement to suspend heavy tariffs on each other marked the effective end of the first phase of Trump’s approach on the topic.

The China agreement followed a more basic deal reached with the United Kingdom last week. Those two nations are the first to strike any kind of concrete agreement since Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2.

The upshot is that the most ambitious element of Trump’s tariff approach has, in effect, been abandoned. Few people now expect sky-high tariffs to be held in place for the years that would be required to — maybe — spark a serious resurgence in American manufacturing.

Instead, a short-term strategy to improve trading arrangements with individual nations, without upending the global system, seems to be the order of the day.

Intensive talks between American and Chinese negotiators in Switzerland set the stage for a reduction of 115 percentage points on tariffs between each side. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports are to fall from 145 percent to 30 percent. Beijing’s levies on American imports are to fall from 125 percent to 10 percent.

Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent said that the highest tariffs imposed during the relatively short-lived trade war were “the equivalent of an embargo, and neither side........

© The Hill