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Donald Trump said on Thursday the US and China had signed a trade deal, two weeks after saying they had reached an understanding in London about how to implement a truce in the countries’ dispute.

“We just signed with China yesterday,” the US president said at the White House on Thursday, without providing any details.

A White House official said the US and China had “agreed to an additional understanding for a framework to implement the Geneva agreement”, in a reference to the trade talks that the nations held in May, when they first negotiated a truce.

Two people familiar with the situation said on Thursday that Washington and Beijing appeared to have put in writing what had previously been negotiated but not included in a formal document. Ahead of the London talks, US officials had said they wanted to reach a handshake deal with the Chinese, but some experts said it was naive not to have a document.

The agreement in Geneva involved significantly reducing tariffs on each other for 90 days while they tried to hammer out a comprehensive trade accord. The deal had faltered, however, over disagreements about Chinese rare earth exports and US export controls.

Earlier this month, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent led a team that included commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and US trade representative Jamieson Greer for talks in London with Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng to resolve the impasse. After two days, the sides said they had reached a deal but provided no details.

On Thursday, Lutnick said they had completed the deal that was originally reached in Geneva. “That deal was signed and sealed two days ago,” he told Bloomberg television.

“While we need to look at the details, if the deal brings more certainty, predictability and fairness into US-China trade it will be a great victory for the people of both countries,” said Sean Stein, president of the US-China Business Council. 

China’s commerce ministry on Friday said the two sides had “further confirmed” the details of the framework agreement reached in London. 

It added that approvals of export applications for controlled items would be issued “in accordance with the law’, and that the US side would also lift “restrictive measures” taken against China, without giving further details.

The purported deal comes as the Trump administration works to reach broad agreements on trade with multiple partners ahead of a July 9 deadline when “reciprocal” tariffs the president announced in April would be reapplied. Those levies, of up to 50 per cent on most US trading partners, had been temporarily lowered to 10 per cent for 90 days to allow foreign countries to negotiate.

US officials have since been holding intensive talks with countries including India, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and the EU to reach permanent settlements. 

Only the UK has reached a trade agreement with the US, while China has secured lower “reciprocal” tariffs of 10 per cent following a period of tit-for-tat tariff increases. Trump has also left in place additional tariffs of 20 per cent on all Chinese imports, citing Beijing’s failure to slow the flow of precursors of the drug fentanyl from China.

The administration is also looking at applying global tariffs to imports in sectors including semiconductors and consumer electronics, aerospace parts, lumber, copper, pharmaceuticals and critical minerals.

Additional reporting by Wenjie Ding in Beijing and Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai

A couple of years ago, Mick McDaniel started a company in Indianapolis to make solar panels in the United States. Then-President Joe Biden had just signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a law packed with tax incentives for clean energy. America’s solar market was about to take off.

Since then, tens of billions of dollars have poured into solar factories that are operating or under development, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, or SEIA, which advocates on behalf of the field. Once those factories are all finished, the facilities could create close to 60,000 manufacturing jobs, the trade group has said.

But those investments are now at risk.

Congressional Republicans are on the verge of rolling back clean-energy tax credits as part of a huge tax-and-spending bill that’s a cornerstone of President Trump’s second-term agenda. On the chopping block are incentives that encourage solar developers to buy American-made products, like solar panels and components.

Abruptly unwinding the incentives would threaten a decade-long push to onshore solar manufacturing and challenge China’s dominance of the sector, according to industry executives and analysts.

“What I see two years out is low-cost will once again drive demand in this market,” says McDaniel, general manager of Bila Solar. He adds, “That’s going to be a hard road for some of us who have [higher costs] than panels made over in China or Southeast Asia.”

President Trump said in a recent post on Truth Social, “I HATE ‘GREEN TAX CREDITS’” in the tax-and-spending bill Congress is negotiating.

Mark Schiefelbein/AP/AP

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President Trump supported solar manufacturing in his first term

Since 2022, when Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, companies have invested $9.1 billion in U.S. solar factories that are operating and another $36.7 billion in facilities that are under construction or in development, according to SEIA.

This year, U.S. factories will be able to make enough solar panels to meet most of the country’s demand, the trade group said.

Asked about the potential impacts of ending clean-energy tax credits that help domestic solar factories, a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said in a statement to NPR that the “radical climate initiatives” of the Biden administration are costing Americans billions of dollars. “Rather than using taxpayer dollars to subsidize uneconomic energy sources to meet vague climate change goals, President Trump is unleashing energy sources that are economical and will drive down bills for everyday families,” Rogers said.

But Trump himself tried to boost U.S. solar manufacturing during his first term. In 2018, Trump approved tariffs on imported solar cells and panels after the U.S. International Trade Commission found that a flood of imports hurt American companies. In a recent post on Truth Social, Trump complained that China dominates renewable energy supply chains.

Renewables are cost competitive with fossil-fueled energy — even without subsidies, according to the financial firm Lazard. But manufacturers and industry analysts say U.S. solar developers still need incentives to use American-made products.

If the tax credits disappear too soon, companies building solar plants will “buy the cheaper foreign panels to get that cost down as much as you possibly can,” says Doug Lewin, an energy consultant in Texas. “And that leaves the American manufacturer of solar modules [and components] just stranded.”

Trump’s 2018 tariffs helped protect domestic manufacturers, says Scott Moskowitz, vice president of market strategy and industry affairs at Qcells, which announced it was building a Georgia solar factory in 2018 shortly after Trump set the import tariffs. However, Moskowitz says the tax incentives passed under the Biden administration were key to creating demand for solar panels and components that are produced in the U.S.

“It’s not a question of whether or not the country is going to install solar if these provisions are removed or phased out too quickly,” Moskowitz says. “It’s just a matter of where [project developers] are going to get the product from.”

The stakes go beyond who supplies America’s solar market. With more time, Moskowitz says U.S. manufacturers could scale up the size of their operations to compete globally.

“You want to set up that counterweight to China,” Lewin says. “You want to be able to tell Pakistan and Latin America and everywhere else, ‘No, you can go through the United States for this vital resource for the 21st century. You don’t have to go to China.’”

An aerial view of a solar plant in Kayenta, Arizona, in 2024.

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Presidents have tried for years to make America a solar manufacturer 

Every president since Barack Obama has used tariffs to try to nurture domestic solar manufacturing by raising costs on imported panels and components — first from China and later from Southeast Asia, as well.

However, tariffs on their own weren’t enough to build a manufacturing sector big enough to meet U.S. solar demand. That’s why the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act were hailed as a breakthrough by advocates of the domestic solar industry.

“We were already seeing an increase in manufacturing before that, but the IRA was like throwing gas on that fire,” says Lewin, the Texas energy consultant.

But just as American manufacturing is taking off, the outlook for the country’s solar market has now been thrown into doubt by Congress.

Legislative text released by the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month calls for phasing out tax credits for solar plants starting next year. Under current law, those credits, which encourage companies to use American-made products, are scheduled to start phasing out in 2032 or when greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector are 25% of 2022 levels, whichever comes later.

“I expect to see a couple of painful years in the U.S. solar industry, period,” says Craig Lawrence, a partner at the investment firm Energy Transition Ventures. “But I ultimately think it bounces back.”

High voltage power lines in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

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Supporters push for slow tax-credit phaseout

The broader impact of rolling back incentives will depend on the details of whatever lawmakers ultimately agree to.

Without tax credits, America would build fewer clean-energy projects and use more natural gas to generate electricity, according to a study this winter commissioned by the Clean Energy Buyers Association, whose members range from Amazon to ExxonMobil to Walmart.

“There will be some companies that go under if they do this. But we will still see solar built. We’ll just see less of it, and it’ll be more expensive,” Lewin says.

Those costs are expected to be passed on to homeowners, renters and businesses through higher electricity bills, according to the Clean Energy Buyers Association’s study.

Limiting renewable energy development also raises concerns about electric reliability, says Heather Reams, president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a right-of-center advocacy group.

“You’re looking at the lights going out and the air conditioning going off in the hot summer,” Reams says. “And then not meeting the [electricity] demands of tomorrow, leaving the U.S. behind competitively.”

Industry executives and analysts say clean energy projects are crucial to meet rising power demand from things like data centers and factories, because the plants can be constructed quickly and produce electricity that is relatively cheap.

Reams’ group has called for lawmakers to delay phasing out the tax credits at least until after 2027. “I don’t think anyone’s arguing they need to be here until the end of time,” she says. “But market certainty is something that all business owners understand.”

Manufacturers are already struggling with the looming policy changes.

“If my market is smaller, what kind of decisions do I have to make about investment, hiring and growth on my side to right size my business for that future that will be smaller?” says McDaniel, the Indianapolis solar manufacturer. “We don’t know how much that demand side will get impacted and how much smaller that market will be.”

With Congress under pressure to deliver Trump a tax-and-spending bill by July 4, solar manufacturers and their supporters are running out of time to sway Republican lawmakers.

“They’re getting ready to walk off the field,” Lewin says, “and cede the 21st century to the Chinese.”

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Preliminary intelligence assessments provided to European governments indicate that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile remains largely intact following US strikes on its main nuclear sites, two officials have said.

The people said the intelligence suggested that Iran’s stockpile of 408kg of uranium enriched close to weapons-grade levels was not concentrated in Fordow, one of its two main enrichment sites, at the time of last weekend’s attack.

It had been distributed to various other locations, the assessments found.

The findings call into question US President Donald Trump’s assertion that the bombing had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme.

In an apparent reference to Fordow, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Thursday: “Nothing was taken out of [the] facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”

The people said EU governments were still awaiting a full intelligence report on the extent of the damage to Fordow, which was built deep beneath a mountain near the holy city of Qom, and that one initial report suggested “extensive damages, but not full structural destruction”.

Iranian officials have suggested the enriched uranium stockpile was moved before the US bombing of the plant, which came after days of Israeli strikes on the country.

At a Pentagon press briefing on Thursday, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth sidestepped questions about whether Iran had taken the uranium out of Fordow before the strikes.

When pressed by reporters, Hegseth said: “I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise.”

The US used bunker-buster bombs to attack Fordow and Natanz, Iran’s other main uranium enrichment facility, on Sunday. It fired cruise missiles at a third site, Isfahan, which was used in the fuel conversion cycle and for storage.

Trump has dismissed a provisional American intelligence assessment, leaked to US media, that said Iran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a matter of months.

Hegseth lambasted the media on Thursday for focusing on the report, which the US Defense Intelligence Agency had later stressed was a “preliminary, low-confidence assessment”.

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said this week that it had assessed that US and Israeli strikes had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years”.

But experts have warned that if Tehran has retained its stockpile of enriched uranium and set up advance centrifuges at hidden sites, it could still have the capacity to produce the fissile material required for a weapon.

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told French Radio on Thursday that Iran’s nuclear programme had “suffered enormous damage”, though he said claims of its complete destruction were overblown.

Iran insists its programme is for peaceful civilian purposes.

Fordow was the main site for enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity, a small step away from weapons grade. Experts said the 408kg stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 per cent had been stored at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan before Israel launched its war against Iran on June 13.

Iran’s total stockpile of enriched uranium was more than 8,400kg, but most of that was enriched to low levels.

Satellite images of Fordow after Sunday’s bombing show tunnel entrances apparently sealed with earth and holes that may be the entry points of the US’s 30,000lb precision-guided bunker busters. Access roads also appear damaged.

Grossi said this week that Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi had sent a letter to the IAEA on June 13 warning that Iran would “adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials”.

Grossi said the UN nuclear watchdog’s inspectors, who have been unable to visit the plants since Israel launched its assault on Iran, should be allowed to return to the sites to “account for the stockpiles of uranium, including, most importantly, the 408kg enriched to 60 per cent”.

The US had not provided definitive intelligence to EU allies on Iran’s remaining nuclear capabilities following the strikes, and was withholding clear guidance on how it plans future relations with Tehran, said three officials briefed on the discussions.

EU policy towards Tehran was “on hold” pending a new initiative from Washington on seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis, the people said, adding that conversations between Trump and EU leaders this week had failed to provide a clear message.

The Trump administration had been holding indirect negotiations with Tehran before the war in the hopes of a deal to curb its nuclear activities.

Trump said on Wednesday that Washington would talk to Tehran next week, but he also suggested a deal might not be needed following the strikes on Iran’s nuclear plants.

“It is completely erratic,” said one of the people. “For now, we are doing nothing.”