Trade tensions set to cool off as Trump, Xi eye breakthrough call
Agencies
Abreakthrough in stalled U.S.-China trade talks could be near, U.S. officials said Sunday, expressing hope that a call between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping – expected soon, might break the deadlock.
Tensions flared Friday when Trump accused Beijing of backtracking on a recent Geneva agreement that paused tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days.
Adding to the strain, The Wall Street Journal reported China was dragging its feet on export licenses for rare earths critical to car and chip manufacturing – a claim later confirmed by U.S. officials.
Still, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent struck a more optimistic tone on CBS's Face the Nation, saying the remaining gaps 'could soon be bridged.' 'I'm confident that when President Trump and Party Chairman Xi have a call, this will be ironed out,'
Bessent said, noting that China was 'withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement.' When asked if rare earths were among those products, Bessent said, 'Yes.' 'Maybe it's a glitch in the Chinese system. Maybe it's intentional. We'll see after the president speaks with Xi,' he said.
Asked when the Trump-Xi call might take place, Bessent said: 'I believe we will see something very soon.' Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told ABC that the call could happen 'this week,' but said he had no confirmation of a scheduled time.
Since Trump returned to the presidency, he has imposed sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners, with especially high rates on Chinese imports.
New tit-for-tat levies on both sides reached triple digits before the recent de-escalation, when Washington agreed to temporarily reduce additional tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30%.
China, meanwhile, lowered its added duties from 125% to 10%.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News Sunday that China was 'slow-rolling the deal,' adding: 'We are taking certain actions to show them what it feels like on the other side of that equation.' 'Our president understands what to do. He's going to go work it out,' Lutnick said.
Lutnick also said a U.S. court battle over Trump's tariff strategy – one court ruling to block the tariffs has been stayed pending appeal – would ultimately end in a win for the president.'Tariffs are not going away,' Lutnick said.
Separate from the China deal, Trump said Friday he would double sector-specific tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50% starting June 4 – sparking ire from the European Union, which said it would retaliate.
Hassett said China's dumping of low-cost steel was hurting U.S. industry – which in turn was hindering military preparedness.'The bottom line is that we've got to be ready in case things don't happen the way we want, because if we have cannons but not cannonballs, then we can't fight a war,' Hassett told This Week.
'And if we don't have steel, then the U.S. isn't ready, and we're not preparing ourselves for something,' he added.
'We have to have a steel industry that's ready for American defense.'
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The bill includes one provision related to democracy and checks and balances; it would expand the executive branch's power by curtailing judges' ability to hold people in contempt of court. Provision critics said it could take away the courts' power to restrain the federal government if it violates the Constitution or breaks the law. We found no provision in the bill that says the president can delay or cancel an election. In July 2020, amid the pandemic and a surge in voting by mail, Trump floated the idea of delaying the election. At the time, he was running for re-election. But the Constitution empowers Congress to set the date by which states must choose their presidential electors, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found in 2020. 'Since 1845, Congress has required states to appoint presidential electors on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which represents the date by which voters in every state must cast their ballot for President,' the report said. Congress still has that power, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor. The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 added a new definition of 'Election Day' that makes it clear that a voting extension can occur only through state law specified in advance and under tightly restricted conditions, such as a catastrophe, Foley said. That means Election Day 'cannot otherwise be cancelled or delayed' and the president plays no role in any alteration of Election Day, Foley said. Congress can change the Election Day date by enacting a new statute, as it did with the Electoral Count Reform Act, Foley said. Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of California, Berkeley law professor, told PolitiFact nothing in the bill lets Trump cancel or delay elections. 'The Constitution provides that elections for Congress be held every two years and for President every four years,' Chemerinsky said. 'There is no constitutional authority to cancel elections.' The bill includes a different provision that some experts called a threat to democracy, but not at the ballot box. Section 70302 would make it harder for judges to find a defendant in contempt of court for ignoring a judge's orders. Here's how: The legislation would require plaintiffs to pay a security bond before a judge could find the defendant in contempt of court. That would mean judges could no longer waive the security bond requirement, something that frequently happens in cases against the government. The section references a federal rule that says a court may issue a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order only if the plaintiff pays a security bond to cover costs and damages by any party 'found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained'. A security bond is an insurance policy to protect someone wrongfully accused of wrongdoing from financial losses during litigation, Kashdan said. The courts can require plaintiffs to pay money that the court holds until the end of the litigation 'If they win, they get their money back,' Kashdan said. 'If they lose, and the person they sued had a right to do whatever it was they were prevented from doing during the lawsuit, they get to keep that money to help compensate them for any losses they experienced during the litigation.' However, 'those seeking such court orders generally do not have the resources to post a bond, and insisting on it would immunise unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review,' wrote Chemerinsky for the website Just Security, which publishes a Trump litigation tracker. 'It always has been understood that courts can choose to set the bond at zero.' A March White House memo that criticised organisations for suing the federal government said enforcement of the security bond rule 'is critical to ensuring that taxpayers do not foot the bill for costs or damages caused by wrongly issued preliminary relief by activist judges and to achieving the effective administration of justice'. The House bill provision raised concern among groups that have defended the judiciary's role to provide a check on Trump's power. As of May 23, at least 177 court rulings have temporarily paused Trump administration actions, according to The New York Times. Social media posts say the Republican tax and budget bill will let Trump 'delay or cancel elections – legally'. We found nothing in the bill that would let Trump cancel or delay elections. A provision would make it harder for judges to hold people in contempt of court, but that is not the same as cancelling elections. Only Congress can change a presidential election's date, not the president, and this bill doesn't change that. We rate this statement False.
