Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton, and I'm coming to you live from our studio in central London.

Today's edition of NewsHour begins with what could be described as a temporary trade truce between two countries.

But for many of us, the announcement today that the U.S.

and China are ratcheting down. The import taxes, they've slapped on each other's goods,

if only for 90 days, will lead to a sigh of relief. That's because the vitality of trade between

the world's two largest economies has a huge knock-on effect on companies and consumers in many other places, too.

Speaking at a news conference, the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Beijing and Washington had agreed the trade war between them was counterproductive.

The consensus from both delegations this weekend is neither side wants a decoupling.

And what had occurred with these very high tariffs was the equivalent of an embargo.

And neither side wants that.

We do want trade. We want more balanced trade. And I think that both sides are committed to achieving that.

But the deal they've agreed is far from clear. After the talks wrapped up in Switzerland,

a reporter at the press conference for the U.S. team

aimed this question at the U.S. trade representative, Jameson Greer.

I'm just trying to understand these numbers here because they're all over the place.

We were at 1.45 before, apparently, and 1.25, I believe, from the Chinese side.

So can you say clearly now that the question was, right now for the 90-day period,

the U.S. tariffs on Chinese kids will be down to 30%.

Is that correct for the 30?

So again, this agreement is really about the reciprocal tariff, which was imposed by the United States.

Jameson Greer went on to explain that, yes, some tariffs did in fact remain in place.

But still, the news that the punitive, 145% tariff on Chinese goods had been removed, led to relief on the streets of Beijing.

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