Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that he doesn’t know if President Trump has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about a new trade deal but he is confident that stiff tariffs will force Beijing to the negotiating table.
Mr. Bessent said China “cannot sustain” a trade war because its economy relies heavily on businesses providing “cheap, subsidized goods to the U.S.”
“If there is a sudden stop to that, they will have a sudden stop in the economy,” Mr. Bessent said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “So they will negotiate.”
Mr. Trump and China have sent mixed messages on the state of the trade negotiations: The president said in an interview published Friday that tariff negotiations with China are underway. Beijing has indicated that trade negotiations are not taking place.
Mr. Bessent said he has “interactions with my Chinese counterparts” at the annual Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — “but it was more on traditional things like financial stability” and “global economic early warnings.”
“I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” the Treasury secretary said. “I know they have a good relationship and respect for each other, but, again, I think the Chinese will see that this high tariff level is unsustainable for their business model.”
Asked why Beijing would deny that negotiations are ongoing, Mr. Bessent said, “I think they are playing to a different audience.”
The Trump administration has slapped a 145% tariff on Chinese imports. China countered with a 125% tariff on U.S. imports.
Mr. Trump last week signaled that he is optimistic about trade talks with China and that the tariff rate on their imports “will come down substantially.”
On Sunday, Mr Bessent said Mr. Trump is relying on “strategic uncertainty” in trade negotiations with the United States’ biggest trading partners.
Setting aside the negotiations with China, he said the White House plans to spend the next 90 days negotiating deals with 17 countries and “some of those are moving along very well, especially with the Asian countries.”
“In game theory, it is called strategy uncertainty,” Mr. Bessent said. “So you are not going to tell the person on the other side of the negotiation where you are going to end up, and nobody is better at creating this leverage than President Trump.”
“He has shown these high tariffs — here is the stick, this is where the tariffs can go, and the carrot is come to us, take off your tariffs, take off your non-tariff trade barriers, stop manipulating your currency, stop subsidizing your labor and capital and then we can talk,” he said.
