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Monday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. would welcome 600,000 Chinese students into the country to go to college, despite months of escalating tariffs and hints of more to come.

“I hear so many stories that we’re not going to allow their students,” the president said at the White House. “We’re going to allow their students to come in. It’s very important, 600,000 students. It’s very important. But we’re going to get along with China.”

The move would more than double the 270,000 Chinese students who currently study at U.S. universities, and comes amid a months-long standoff between Washington and Beijing over trade. Earlier this year, Trump announced a 145 percent tariff on all Chinese goods, prompting Beijing to respond with a 125 percent tariff on U.S. exports.

While negotiators in Geneva agreed to put a hold on new tariffs in May, Trump has since suggested he may levy further penalties. Last week, he called for a 200 percent tariff on magnets from China, a critical component in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and telecommunications.

“We have the capacity to make those magnets, but China, intelligently, went and they sort of took a monopoly on the world’s magnets,” Trump said. “It’ll probably take us a year to have them.”

Negotiators have reportedly been in touch, but it’s not yet clear whether Trump’s announcement of a student visa expansion is a genuine olive branch or part of the back-and-forth diplomacy of the trade fight. A meeting between Trump and China’s president Xi Jinping was put on hold this year.

Trump said he would like to meet with Xi Jinping “this year” and that ties with China remain a priority for his administration. “We’re taking a lot of money in from China because of the tariffs and the different things. It’s a very important relationship,” he said. “It’s a much better relationship economically than it was before with Biden. But he allowed that. They just took him to the cleaners.”

The Move to Expand Visas Comes After Aggressive Rhetoric on China

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he would “aggressively revoke visas” for Chinese citizens, especially those who come into our country to work in our research institutions or who are members or affiliates of the Chinese Communist Party.” The move had higher education leaders worried about the potential loss of thousands of foreign students on top of other Trump administration immigration restrictions. Trump said last month that he’d “always been in favor” of allowing students from China to attend U.S. schools, and on Monday doubled down on the idea that education might help bridge relations.

Trump’s new figure of 600,000 Chinese students would more than double the current number of students from China. It could also be a boon to universities, which in 2018 took in about $10 billion in international tuition.

The potential move also comes days after Trump floated tariffs as high as 200 percent on several Chinese-made products, including magnets. Last week, he issued an executive order directing the U.S. Commerce Department to slap tariffs on Chinese-manufactured magnets, often used in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and telecommunications equipment. U.S. companies produce the technology, but Beijing’s dominance of the supply chain makes it difficult to manufacture domestically.

The order gave U.S. businesses 120 days to file for an exemption, angering manufacturers that produce the material domestically.