WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will speak soon to iron out trade issues including a dispute over critical minerals, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday.
Trump on Friday accused China of violating an agreement with the US to mutually roll back tariffs and trade restrictions for critical minerals.
“What China is doing is they are holding back products that are essential for the industrial supply chains of India, of Europe. And that is not what a reliable partner does,” Bessent said in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“I am confident that when President Trump and Party Chairman Xi have a call, that this will be ironed out. But the fact that they are withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement – maybe it’s a glitch in the Chinese system, maybe it’s intentional. We’ll see after the President speaks with the party chairman.”
Trump said on Friday he was sure that he would speak to Xi. China said in April that the two leaders had not had a conversation recently.
Asked if a talk with Xi was on Trump’s schedule, Bessent said, “I believe we’ll see something very soon.”
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said no specific date for the conversation has been set, but there have been discussions that the leaders will talk about last month’s Geneva agreement on some tariff disputes.
“President Trump, we expect, is going to have a wonderful conversation about the trade negotiations this week with President Xi. That’s our expectation,” Hassett said.
China said on Monday that US President Donald Trump’s accusations that Beijing had violated the consensus reached in Geneva trade talks were “groundless”, and promised to take forceful measures to safeguard its interests.
The comment by the commerce ministry was in response to Trump’s remarks on Friday that China had breached a bilateral deal to roll back tariffs.
The ministry said China had implemented and actively upheld the agreement reached last month in Geneva, while the US had introduced multiple “discriminatory restrictive” measures against China.
Those measures included issuing guidance on AI chip export controls, halting sales of chip design software to China and revoking visas for Chinese students, the ministry added.
“The US government has unilaterally and repeatedly provoked new economic and trade frictions, exacerbating uncertainty and instability in bilateral economic and trade relations,” the ministry said in a statement.
It did not elaborate on what forceful measures it might take in response.
Beijing and Washington agreed in mid-May in Geneva to pause triple-digit tariffs for 90 days. In addition, China also promised to lift trade countermeasures that restricted its exports of the critical metals needed for US semiconductor, electronics and defence production.
Trump on Friday also announced a doubling of import tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50 percent.
While China is the world’s largest steel producer and exporter, it ships very little to the United States after a 25 percent tariff imposed in 2018 shut most Chinese steel out of the market. China ranks third among aluminum suppliers.
