WASHINGTON: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday did not back President Donald Trump’s assertion that tariff talks with China were under way and said he did not know if the US president had talked to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Trump administration signaled openness last week to de-escalating a trade war between the world’s two largest economies that has raised fears of recession. Trump himself has said talks on tariffs were taking place with China and that he and Xi have spoken.
Yet Beijing has denied that any trade talks are occurring.
Bessent, a key player in US trade talks with multiple countries, said that he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week during International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington, but did not mention tariffs.
“I had interaction with my Chinese counterpart, but it was more on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” Bessent added. “I know they have a very good relationship and a lot of respect for each other.”
Asked why the Chinese were denying talks, Bessent said. “I think they’re playing to a different audience.”
Bessent, who said last week that tariff negotiations with Beijing would be a “slog,” did not give a timetable for any potential agreement with China.
He said a trade deal can take months, but a de-escalation and an agreement in principle can be achieved sooner and would keep tariffs from ratcheting back to the maximum level.
Trump’s erratic, and often confusing, rollout of tariffs has hit many countries including the largest US trading partners, like Canada, Mexico and China. The result has been almost unprecedented market volatility and serious damage to investor trust in US assets.
In a separate television interview on Sunday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the United States was holding daily conversations with China over tariffs, but did not elaborate.
“Every day we are in conversation with China, along with those other 99, 100 countries that have come to the table,” Rollins said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Bessent does not back up Trump on China tariff discussions
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Bessent does not back up Trump on China tariff discussions
- Trump’s erratic, and often confusing, rollout of tariffs has hit many countries including the largest US trading partners, like Canada, Mexico and China
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
