US says trade row with China could ease after Trump-Xi talks
US President Donald Trump participates in a welcoming ceremony with China's President Xi Jinping during his 2017 visit to Beijing. (Reuters pic)
WASHINGTON : A logjam in the trade talks between the US and China could be broken once Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping speak, US officials said 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 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's '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, however noting 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.'
'Maybe it's a glitch in the Chinese system. Maybe it's intentional. We'll see after the president speaks with' Xi, he said.
On when a Trump-Xi call could take place, Bessent said: 'I believe we will see something very soon.'
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House's National Economic Council told ABC that the call could happen 'this week' but that he had no confirmation of a scheduled time.
Since Trump returned to the presidency, he has slapped sweeping tariffs on most US trading partners, with especially high rates on Chinese imports.
New tit-for-tat levies on both sides reached three digits before the de-escalation this month, where 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 that a US court battle over Trump's tariff strategy – one court's ruling to block the tariffs has been stayed pending an appeal – would ultimately end with a win for the president.
'Tariffs are not going away,' Lutnick said.
'We've got to be ready'
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 US industry – which in turn was hindering US 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 US 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 defence.'
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