GENEVA (AP) — American and Chinese officials earlier this week said they had reached a deal to roll back most of their recent tariffs and call a 90-day truce in their trade policy changes to allow for more talks on resolving their trade disputes.

Economists warned that tariffs still remained higher than before and that the outcome of future talks was uncertain.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the United States agreed to drop its 145 percent tariff rate on Chinese goods by 115 percentage points to 30 percent, while China agreed to lower its rate on American goods by the same amount to 10 percent. Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the tariff reductions at a news conference in Geneva.

The two officials struck a positive tone as they said the two sides had set up consultations to continue discussing their trade issues. Bessent said at the news briefing following two days of talks that the high tariff levels would have amounted to a complete blockage of each side’s goods — an outcome neither side wants.

“The consensus from both delegations this weekend is neither side wants a decoupling,” Bessent said. “And what had occurred with these very high tariff … was an embargo, the equivalent of an embargo. And neither side wants that. We do want trade.”

“We want more balanced trade,” he said. “And I think that both sides are committed to achieving that.”

The delegations, escorted around town and guarded by scores of Swiss police, met for at least a dozen hours on both days of the weekend at a sunbaked 17th-century villa that serves as the official residence of the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

At times, the delegation leaders broke away from their staffs and settled into sofas on the villa’s patios overlooking Lake Geneva, helping deepen personal ties in the effort to reach a much-sought deal.

China’s Commerce Ministry said the two sides agreed to cancel 91 percent in tariffs on each other’s goods and suspend another 24 percent in tariffs for 90 days, bringing the total reduction to 115 percentage points.

The ministry called the agreement an important step for the resolution of the two countries’ differences and said it lays the foundation for further cooperation.

“This initiative aligns with the expectations of producers and consumers in both countries and serves the interests of both nations as well as the common interests of the world,” a ministry statement said.

China said it hopes the United States will stop “the erroneous practice of unilateral tariff hikes” and work with China to safeguard the development of their economic and trade relations, injecting more certainty and stability into the global economy, the ministry said.

The joint statement issued by the two countries said China also agreed to suspend or remove other measures it has taken since April 2 in response to the American tariffs.

China has increased export controls on rare earths, including some critical to the defense industry and added more American companies to its export control and unreliable entity lists, restricting their business with and in China.