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Former President Donald Trump announced Monday that the United States will welcome 600,000 Chinese students to attend college in the U.S. In the midst of a tariff standoff with Beijing, Trump’s comments suggest that relations with China may thaw despite months of escalating tensions.

Trump’s announcement, from the White House lawn, also signaled that his administration would not back down on efforts to pressure Beijing with broad tariffs, a warning shot Trump punctuated with the threat of even higher levies.

“I hear so many stories that we’re not going to allow their students, the students from China,” Trump said. “We’re going to allow their students to come in, and we want to do that; it’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important. But we’re going to get along with China.”

Trump’s announcement comes days after both the U.S. and Chinese leaders agreed not to impose additional tariffs on one another. As part of the so-called truce, Washington last month placed a 145 percent levy on all Chinese imports, prompting Beijing to slap a 125 percent tax on U.S. exports in retaliation.

In May, negotiators in Geneva agreed to pause additional tariffs. Trump, however, in the weeks since, has suggested additional measures, including a 200 percent tariff last week on Chinese-made magnets. At the time, he threatened the move over concerns that China has an “almost monopoly” on the supply of the technology.

“We’re doing something very big on magnets, which is so interesting because China, intelligently, went and they sort of took a monopoly on the world’s magnets,” Trump said. “We may take a year to have them.”

Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would welcome 600,000 Chinese students to study in the U.S. stands in contrast to other statements in his own administration. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a “crackdown” on Chinese nationals in the U.S., saying the State Department would “aggressively revoke” visas for people with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and “every employee of every entity engaged in sensitive research,” Breitbart reported at the time.

The comment, which sent shockwaves through the higher education space, prompted a backlash from universities, according to Bloomberg, which added that “enrollment of international students has fallen by more than 10 percent in a year.”

In June, walked back the proposal, however, telling reporters he had “always been in favor” of admitting students. His comments Monday from the White House further clarified that position, leaving some room for optimism on the education front even as the tariff war rages on.

“The relationship with China is probably better than it’s ever been, because I just don’t believe they’re going to be able to continue to do what they’ve been doing to the United States, as far as tariffs are concerned,” Trump said.

As the former president continued his speech, he was asked whether he would be willing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose last summit with Trump came in 2019. Trump, according to a report from Bloomberg, said “yes, we will,” adding that he was “always in favor of meetings” and “looking to get along.”

When asked about the tariffs, Trump was more pointed. “We’re taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and the different things,” Trump said. “It’s a very important relationship.”

“It’s a much better relationship economically than it was before with Biden,” he added. “But he allowed that. They just took him to the cleaners.”

In pledging to admit 600,000 students, Trump pointed to a win for universities as much as for diplomacy. Chinese students make up the largest pool of foreign students in U.S. colleges, with about 270,000 already in the U.S. as of last year.

Should that number double, universities stand to gain significantly, as foreign students alone provide billions of dollars in revenue to American schools each year.