Busan, South Korea: US President Donald Trump has lauded an “amazing” meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea at the end of his whistle-stop tour of Asia, saying it had resulted in a de-escalation of tensions and a deal that would end China’s roadblock on rare earths.

The deal will also see China resume soybean purchases, while the US agreed to halve fentanyl-related levies on Chinese goods to 10 per cent, taking the overall tariff rate imposed on Beijing since Trump resumed office from 57 per cent to 47 per cent.

The meeting lasted about one hour and 40 minutes at a military air base in the port city of Busan, marking the first time the pair had met face-to-face since 2019.

Trump outlined the key features of the deal to reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew back to Washington, DC, saying he and Xi had concluded an “outstanding group of decisions” during an “amazing meeting”.

“I guess, on the scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was at a 12,” Trump said. “You know, just the whole relationship is very, very important. I think it was very good.”

The terms reflected those that the Trump administration had already disclosed following a framework agreement struck at the weekend by Chinese and US officials in Malaysia.

Critically, Beijing agreed to defer for a year its dramatically expanded export controls on rare earths, which threatened to choke global high-tech manufacturing, and in turn, the US abandoned Trump’s additional threatened levies of 100 per cent on Chinese goods that were due to kick in on November 1.

Xi, who will remain in South Korea to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit, told Trump that China and the US should not fall into a “vicious cycle of retaliation” against each other, Chinese state media agency Xinhua reported.