Beijing deal will speed China's export of minerals to US
The agreement comes after China retaliated against steep import tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese goods, and moved to slow the export of rare earth minerals and magnets much needed by US industrial interests.
Mr Bessent said on Fox Business Network's Mornings With Maria that US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping 'had a phone call' previously 'and then our teams met in London, ironed this out, and I am confident now that we, as agreed, the magnets will flow'.
'Part of the agreement was tariffs coming down and rare earth magnets starting to flow back to the US,' Mr Bessent said.
'They formed the core of a lot of our industrial base. They were not flowing as fast as previously agreed.'
His comments come after Mr Trump announced two weeks earlier an agreement with China that he said would ease exportation of magnets and rare earth minerals
That pact cleared the way for the trade talks to continue.
The US has previously suspended some sales to China of critical US technologies like components used for jet engines and semiconductors.
But it has also agreed to stop trying to revoke visas of Chinese nationals on US college campuses.
Mr Bessent added of critical mineral exports: 'What we're seeing here is a de-escalation.'
Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg TV that the deal was signed earlier this week.
China's commerce ministry said on Friday that the two sides had 'further confirmed the details of the framework', though its statement did not explicitly mention US access to rare earths that have been at the centre of the negotiations.
'China will, in accordance with the law, review and approve eligible export applications for controlled items. In turn, the United States will lift a series of restrictive measures it had imposed on China,' it said.
Initial talks in Geneva in early May led both sides to postpone massive tariff hikes that were threatening to freeze much trade between the two countries.
Later talks in London set a framework for negotiations and the deal mentioned by Mr Trump appeared to formalise that agreement, setting the stage for Mr Bessent's comments on Friday.
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That is because these people's loyalty is not to the constitution, or to a principled reading of the law. It is to their political priors. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Another danger of reporting the court's own account of itself to readers is this: that it can distract from the real stakes of the case. In this decision, the court did not, technically, reach the merits of Trump's absurd and insulting claim that the constitution somehow does not create a birthright entitlement to citizenship. But in the meantime, many children – the American-born infants of immigrant parents – will be denied the right that the 14th amendment plainly guarantees them. The rightwing legal movement, and the Trumpist judges who have advanced it, have long believed that really, this is a white man's country – and that the 14th amendment, with its guarantees of equal protection and its vision of a pluralist nation of equals, living together in dignity across difference – was an error. Those babies, fully American despite their differences and their parents' histories, are squirming, cooing testaments to that better, more just future. They, and the hope that they represent, are more American than Trump and his crony judges will ever be. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
