US and China set for trade talks in London on Monday

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Ryan Patrick Jones

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Three of U.S. President Donald Trump's top aides will meet with their Chinese counterparts in London on Monday for talks aimed at resolving a trade dispute between the world's two largest economies that has kept global markets on edge.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will represent the United States in the talks, Trump announced in a post on his Truth Social platform without providing further details.

China's foreign ministry said on Saturday that vice premier He Lifeng will be in the United Kingdom between June 8 and June 13, adding that the first meeting of the China-U.S. economic and trade consultation mechanism would be held during this visit.    

"The meeting should go very well," Trump wrote.

Trump spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday in a rare leader-to-leader call amid weeks of brewing trade tensions and a dispute over critical minerals.

Trump and Xi agreed to visit one another and asked their staffs to hold talks in the meantime.

Both countries are under pressure to relieve tensions, with the global economy under pressure over Chinese control over the rare earth mineral exports of which it is the dominant producer and investors more broadly anxious about Trump's wider effort to impose tariffs on goods from most U.S. trading partners. 

China, meanwhile, has seen its own supply of key U.S. imports like chip-design software and nuclear plant parts curtailed.

The countries struck a 90-day deal on May 12 in Geneva to roll back some of the triple-digit, tit-for-tat tariffs they had placed on each other since Trump returned to the presidency in January.

That preliminary deal sparked a global relief rally in stock markets, and U.S. indexes that had been in or near bear market levels have recouped the lion's share of their losses.

The S&P 500 stock index, which at its lowest point in early April was down nearly 18% after Trump unveiled his sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs on goods from across the globe, is now only about 2% below its record high from mid-February. The final third of that rally followed the U.S.-China truce struck in Geneva.

Still, that temporary deal did not address broader concerns that strain the bilateral relationship, from the illicit fentanyl trade to the status of democratically governed Taiwan and U.S. complaints about China's state-dominated, export-driven economic model.

Trump has repeatedly threatened an array of punitive measures on trading partners, only to revoke some of them at the last minute. The on-again, off-again approach has baffled world leaders and spooked business executives.

China sees mineral exports as a source of leverage. Halting those exports could put domestic political pressure on the Republican U.S. president if economic growth sags because companies cannot make mineral-powered products.

In recent years, U.S. officials have identified China as its top geopolitical rival and the only country in the world able to challenge the United States economically and militarily.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Ryan Patrick Jones; editing by Costas Pitas, Will Dunham and Anna Driver)