Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had no clue whether President Donald Trump had actually spoken to China to negotiate tariffs—days after Trump said they were happening.
“I think that the Chinese will see that this high tariff level is unsustainable for their business model,” Bessent said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
Host Martha Raddatz asked Bessent why China would lie about negotiations if the two countries were engaged in talks. “Why would they deny that the negotiations are going on?”
Bessent claimed the Chinese were “playing to a different audience,” but as Raddatz continued to press him on the state of any negotiations between the two countries, he refused to say whether any conversations were taking place.
“We have a process in place,” he said. “And again, I just believe these Chinese tariffs are unsustainable.”
The remarks come as Trump has laid siege to the global trade market, imposing sweeping reciprocal tariffs before retreating. Trump has left a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports, though he has exempted multiple industries from the levies.
Trump told TIME in an interview published Friday that the administration had spoken to China to discuss tariffs and that Chinese President Xi Jinping had called Trump. China said on Friday that no talks had begun and urged the U.S. to “stop creating confusion.”
Bessent did say that he met with his Chinese counterpart during last week’s International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group summit in Washington, D.C., although he stated that the two primarily discussed general financial issues.
Many nations are scrambling to strike trade deals with the U.S. before the end of Trump’s self-imposed 90-day deadline, after which he claims the tariffs will be reinstated. Trump said in the TIME interview he had struck “200 deals” that will be finished “in the next three to four weeks,” though he declined to name which countries he made deals with.
But Bessent said the deals don’t even need to be finalized. He told Raddatz that he believes the two sides could agree “in principle” to a set of terms after a period of de-escalation—despite Trump’s promises.
“A trade deal can take months,” Bessent said. “But an agreement in principle, and the good behavior and staying within the parameter of the deal by our trading partners can keep the tariffs they have from ratcheting back to the maximum level.”
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