Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted that China isn’t budging in the face of President Trump’s ill-advised tariffs.
On Fox News Monday morning, Brian Kilmeade asked Bessent about progress on talks between the two countries over trade.
“Do you plan on calling your counterpart [in China]?” Kilmeade queried. Bessent’s response showed that he hadn’t planned on it.
“We will see what happens with China, uh, that it’s important, I think it’s unsustainable from the Chinese side, so, uh, maybe they’ll call me one day,” replied Bessent.
KILMEADE: What about China? Do you plan on calling your counterpart?BESSENT: Maybe they’ll call me one day pic.twitter.com/ne9xV0NOsR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2025
Meanwhile, China’s foreign ministry said Monday that President Xi Jinping and Trump have not spoken recently and that there hasn’t been any progress on a trade deal between the two countries, contradicting Trump’s words in Time magazine on Friday where he said Xi had called him as part of tariff negotiations.
“As far as I know, the two heads of state have not called each other recently,” said Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the ministry, to Reuters. “I would like to reiterate that China and the U.S. have not conducted consultations or negotiations on the tariffs issue.”
Trump has levied tariffs of 145 percent against China, inciting a trade war between the two countries as China retaliated with tariffs of its own. Trump toned down some of his anti-China rhetoric last week, and even claimed that the two countries were working on a deal, only to be immediately corrected by Beijing then as well. It seems China knows that it has all of the leverage with U.S. markets sliding, and will dig in until Trump backs down.
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