US says trade row with China could ease after Trump-Xi talks, which could ‘happen soon'
A logjam in the trade talks between the United States and China could be broken once presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping speak, US officials said on Sunday – a conversation they said could happen soon.
Trump on Friday accused Beijing of violating a deal reached last month in Geneva to temporarily lower staggeringly high tariffs the world's two biggest economies had imposed on each other, in a pause to last 90 days.
China's slow-walking on export licence approvals for rare earths and other elements needed to make cars and chips have fuelled US frustration, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday – a concern since confirmed by US officials.
But US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent seemed to take the pressure down a notch on Sunday, telling CBS' Face the Nation that the gaps could soon be bridged.
'I'm confident that when President Trump and Party Chairman Xi have a call that this will be ironed out,' Bessent said. He noted, however, that China was 'withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement'.
When asked if rare earths were one of those products, Bessent said 'yes'.
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