U.S.-China talks 'a bit stalled' and need Trump and Xi to weigh in, Treasury Secretary Bessent says
BEIJING — U.S.-China trade talks "are a bit stalled," requiring the two countries' leaders to speak directly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News in an interview Thursday local time.
"I believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks," he said, adding that there may be a call between the two countries' leaders "at some point."
After a rapid escalation in trade tensions last month, Bessent helped the world's two largest economies reach a breakthrough agreement in Switzerland on May 12. The countries agreed to roll back recent tariff increases of more than 100% for 90 days, or until mid-August. Diplomatic officials from both sides had a call late last week.
Still, the U.S. has pushed ahead with tech restrictions on Beijing, drawing its ire, while China has yet to significantly ease restrictions on rare earths, contrary to Washington's expectations.
"I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other," Bessent said. "They have a very good relationship and I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President [Donald] Trump makes his [preferences] known."
Trump and China's President Xi Jinping last spoke in January, just before the U.S. president was sworn in for his second term. While Trump has in recent weeks said he would like to speak with Xi, analysts expect China to agree to that only if there's certainty there will be no surprises from the U.S. during the call.
China has maintained communication with the U.S. since the agreement in Switzerland, Chinese Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He Yongqian told reporters at a regular briefing Thursday.
But regarding chip export controls, she said that "China again urges the U.S. to immediately correct its wrong practices ... and together safeguard the consensus reached at high-level talks in Geneva."
That's according to a CNBC translation of her Mandarin-language remarks.
When asked whether China would suspend rare earths' export controls announced in early April, He did not respond directly. Restrictions on items that could be used for both military and civilian use reflect international practice, as well as China's position of "upholding world peace and regional stability," she said.
This week, the Trump administration also announced it would start revoking visas for Chinese students.
"The U.S. decision to revoke Chinese student visas is fully unjustified," China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday, according to an official English transcript. "It uses ideology and national security as pretext."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Has Big Brother arrived? Inside the secretive Trump effort to centralize government data on millions of Americans
The Trump administration is reportedly leaning on an Elon Musk-allied tech company to build wide-ranging data tools pooling government information on millions of Americans and immigrants alike. The campaign has raised alarms from critics that the company could be furthering Musk's DOGE effort to vacuum up and potentially weaponize – or sell – mass amounts of sensitive personal data, particularly against vulnerable groups like immigrants and political dissidents. In March, the president signed an executive order dedicated to 'stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos,' a euphemism for pooling vast stores of data on Americans under the federal government. To carry out the data effort, the administration has deepened the federal government's longstanding partnership with Palantir, a tech firm specializing in building big data applications, which was co-founded by Silicon Valley investor, GOP donor, and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel. Since Trump took office, the administration has reportedly spent more than $113 million with Palantir through new and existing contracts, while the company is slated to begin work on a new $795 million deal with the Defense Department. Palantir is reportedly working with the administration in the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Internal Revenue Service, according to The New York Times. Within these agencies, the firm is reportedly building tools to track the movement of migrants in real time and streamline all tax data. The company is also reportedly in talks about deploying its technology at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education, both of which have been targets of DOGE, and which store sensitive information about Americans' identities and finances. 'We act as a data processor, not a data controller,' the company insisted in response to the Times report. 'Our software and services are used under direction from the organizations that license our products. These organizations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted.' The Trump administration has reportedly pursued a variety of efforts to use big data to support its priorities, including social media surveillance of immigrants to detect alleged pro-terror views, and American activists who disagree wit Donal Trump's views.. Earlier this month, a group of former Palantir employees warned in an open letter that the company was 'normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a 'revolution' led by oligarchs.' 'By supporting Trump's administration, Elon Musk's DOGE initiative, and dangerous expansions of executive power, they have abandoned their responsibility and are in violation of Palantir's Code of Conduct,' the employees wrote. Previous reporting from CNN and WIRED has described efforts at the Department of Homeland Security to build mass data tools to support tracking and surveilling undocumented immigrants, a key priority for the White House as deportations still aren't reaching levels necessary to meet Trump's promise of rapidly removing millions of people from the country. The effort has involved merging data from outside agencies like Social Security and the IRS, according to WIRED. 'They are trying to amass a huge amount of data,' a senior DHS official told the magazine. 'It has nothing to do with finding fraud or wasteful spending … They are already cross-referencing immigration with SSA and IRS, as well as voter data.' Since Trump took office, DOGE operatives, many of whom are unknown to the public nor have been vetted, have rapidly sought access to data at key agencies, including the Departments of Education and the Treasury, as well as the Social Security Administration, often over the objections of senior staff. The efforts have prompted scores of lawsuits against DOGE. At Social Security, the administration also moved thousands of living, mostly Latino undocumented immigrants into the agency's 'Death Master File' in an attempt to pressure them to leave the country. DOGE itself is reportedly under audit for its action by the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog. An April letter from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee warned of DOGE's 'extreme negligence and an alarmingly cavalier attitude' toward sensitive data. It claimed a whistleblower had described how 'DOGE engineers have tried to create specialized computers for themselves that simultaneously give full access to networks and databases across different agencies.' The 'whistleblower information obtained by the Committee, combined with public reporting, paints a picture of chaos at SSA [Social Security Administration] as DOGE is rapidly, haphazardly, and unlawfully working to implement changes that could disrupt Social Security payments and expose Americans' sensitive data,' the letter reads.'
Business Insider
15 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Stock Market News Review: SPY, QQQ Dip as U.S.-China Tensions Flare, Consumer Sentiment Ends Losing Streak
Both the S&P 500 (SPX) and the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) closed the Friday session well above their afternoon lows, although the benchmark indices were unable to finish in the green ahead of the weekend. Confident Investing Starts Here: This morning, President Trump accused China of violating the preliminary trade deal reached by the countries in Geneva. He didn't dive into the specifics, though he later said in an Oval Office press conference that he would like to speak with China President Xi Jinping about the situation. 'Hopefully we'll work that out,' said Trump. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer provided more details, saying that China was moving too slowly in removing tariff countermeasures and that it hadn't progressed in removing export restrictions on rare earth metals used in products like vehicles and semiconductors. The market sunk lower during the afternoon after Bloomberg reported that the U.S. is preparing sanctions on subsidiaries of Chinese technology companies included in the Entity List. Sources close to the matter added that the U.S. will likely enforce additional restrictions following the subsidiary sanctions in a sign of escalation between the two world powers. Aside from trade updates, the University of Michigan's May Index of Consumer Sentiment tallied in at 52.2, beating the expectation for 51.0 and ending four consecutive months of falling sentiment. The reading remained unchanged from April and was much higher than the preliminary May reading of 50.8 as a result of the U.S.-China preliminary trade agreement. On top of that, the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index for April tallied in at 2.5%, meeting expectations and falling from 2.7% in March. The index is the Fed's preferred inflation gauge and excludes food and energy prices included in the PCE index because of their volatility. The S&P 500 ended the day just barely lower with a 0.01% loss while the Nasdaq 100 fell by 0.11%. At the same time, May turned out to be quite a memorable month, as both indexes registered their strongest monthly performance since November 2023.
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Frencken Group Limited's (SGX:E28) Stock Has Seen Strong Momentum: Does That Call For Deeper Study Of Its Financial Prospects?
Frencken Group's (SGX:E28) stock is up by a considerable 14% over the past month. As most would know, fundamentals are what usually guide market price movements over the long-term, so we decided to look at the company's key financial indicators today to determine if they have any role to play in the recent price movement. In this article, we decided to focus on Frencken Group's ROE. Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company's management is utilizing the company's capital. In simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity. Trump has pledged to "unleash" American oil and gas and these 15 US stocks have developments that are poised to benefit. The formula for ROE is: Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Frencken Group is: 8.4% = S$37m ÷ S$438m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2024). The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. That means that for every SGD1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated SGD0.08 in profit. See our latest analysis for Frencken Group Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. Depending on how much of these profits the company reinvests or "retains", and how effectively it does so, we are then able to assess a company's earnings growth potential. Assuming all else is equal, companies that have both a higher return on equity and higher profit retention are usually the ones that have a higher growth rate when compared to companies that don't have the same features. When you first look at it, Frencken Group's ROE doesn't look that attractive. Although a closer study shows that the company's ROE is higher than the industry average of 3.9% which we definitely can't overlook. However, Frencken Group's five year net income decline rate was 4.9%. Bear in mind, the company does have a slightly low ROE. It is just that the industry ROE is lower. So that could be one of the factors that are causing earnings growth to shrink. So, as a next step, we compared Frencken Group's performance against the industry and were disappointed to discover that while the company has been shrinking its earnings, the industry has been growing its earnings at a rate of 9.8% over the last few years. The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. It's important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. If you're wondering about Frencken Group's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry. Looking at its three-year median payout ratio of 30% (or a retention ratio of 70%) which is pretty normal, Frencken Group's declining earnings is rather baffling as one would expect to see a fair bit of growth when a company is retaining a good portion of its profits. So there could be some other explanations in that regard. For instance, the company's business may be deteriorating. Additionally, Frencken Group has paid dividends over a period of at least ten years, which means that the company's management is determined to pay dividends even if it means little to no earnings growth. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company is expected to keep paying out approximately 32% of its profits over the next three years. Therefore, the company's future ROE is also not expected to change by much with analysts predicting an ROE of 9.8%. In total, it does look like Frencken Group has some positive aspects to its business. However, while the company does have a decent ROE and a high profit retention, its earnings growth number is quite disappointing. This suggests that there might be some external threat to the business, that's hampering growth. With that said, we studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that while the company has shrunk its earnings in the past, analysts expect its earnings to grow in the future. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page for the company. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
