Another 90-Day Truce for China as Yet Undecided
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters in Stockholm, Sweden, that the Chinese delegation spoke too early when they said the two sides agreed to another 90 days at current tariff levels, because the president is the one to decide. However, in a later interview with CNBC, Bessent said the meetings had been "highly satisfactory."
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President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he returned from Scotland, also didn't make an announcement on the truce.
"They're going to brief me tomorrow. We’ll either approve it or not," Trump said. Bessent "felt very good about the meeting, better than he felt yesterday. Yesterday I said, 'Oo, here we go again....'"
Bessent was asked if he warned China that their goods could face an additional 100% tariff shortly, if they don't wind down their purchases of Russian oil. Trump has said he could impose secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian oil and natural gas, as a way to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop bombing Ukraine.
"We described what was making its way through the U.S. Senate," Bessent said, which, he noted, has more than 80 sponsors. He said they also talked about Trump's plan, and that they had heard from Canada and European countries that they would do the same.
"I think anyone who buys sanctioned Russian oil should be ready for this," he said. But he gave no indication that China would change its sourcing. "The Chinese take their sovereignty very seriously," he said.
Bessent was asked about Congress members' criticism of ending export controls on Nvidia H20 chips.
"There’s nothing that’s being exchanged for anything," he said, when it comes to export controls, and said the H20 is well down the technology stack.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also said "U.S. export controls were not something we discussed" during the two days of talks.
China's export controls on rare earth magnets were discussed, however. When Greer was asked for the biggest concession from China, he replied, "They blocked all of their rare earth magnets, and now we’re getting them."
Greer said Chinese negotiators also asked about what would happen with Section 232 trade actions on pharmaceuticals and chips. He shared the prospect that these goods might start with a lower tariff and eventually go to a higher tariff, to give domestic production time to ramp up.