U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said today (Sunday) that he expects China to resume purchases of U.S. soybeans in significant quantities for several years.

He added that he would delay for a year the expanded rare earth export licensing regime and review it.

The two sides practically agreed on the framework to be set in the talks between the two leaders.

The statements come after two days of trade talks in Malaysia, just before Xi Jinping meets Donald Trump on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in South Korea.

China processes about 90 percent of the world’s rare earths, which are used in everything from solar panels to smartphones.

On soybeans, as the trade war began to intensify, China halted all soybean orders, hitting US farmers hard. Beijing is the world’s largest buyer of soybeans, much of which is of US origin.

Besent hinted that the boycott may end soon, but declined to give details. “I’m a farmer who grows soybeans, so I’ve felt that pain, too … I think we have addressed the farmers’ concerns,” he said.

He noted that when the two presidents announce a trade deal next Thursday, U.S. soybean farmers “will feel very good about what’s going on, this season and seasons to come for several years.”

The US president threatened to impose additional 100% tariffs on Chinese goods from November 1 if China tightens controls on exports of rare earths and the technologies needed to process them.

But the finance minister told the ABC he was optimistic that “we’ve avoided that” – the massive new tariffs.

On another outstanding issue involving relations between the two countries, Besent said the details of a deal to transfer Chinese-owned video app TikTok to US control had been resolved and that Trump and Xi would be able to complete the transaction.

The US has sought to wrest the app’s US operations from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance on national security grounds.

TikTok was previously told it had to sell its US operations or shut down, but Trump has delayed the ban four times to facilitate negotiations. The latest extension runs until December.