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US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said that Donald Trump and Xi Jinping still plan to meet this month despite a recent flare-up in trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
“I believe that meeting will still be on,” Bessent told Fox Business on Monday, referring to a planned summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea.
Bessent’s comments mark a turnaround from a social media post from Trump on Friday in which the US president lashed out at China’s imposition of sweeping restrictions on the export of rare earths and critical minerals.
“I was to meet President Xi in two weeks . . . but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
But Trump struck a more conciliatory note on Sunday, writing: “The USA wants to help China, not hurt it!!!”
Bessent said Chinese and US officials would hold talks this week, adding that there had been “substantial communication” over the weekend after the sudden escalation in tensions last week.
Officials from both sides will hold talks in Washington this week during the IMF-World Bank annual meetings.
China’s move last week to announce restrictions on the export of rare earths and critical minerals threatened global supply chains and reignited trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
In response, Trump on Friday said he would impose an additional 100 per cent tariff on imports from China on November 1 unless the two sides reached agreement. Trump and Xi are expected to meet in Gyeongju, South Korea on September 29.
“They have pointed a bazooka at the supply chains and the industrial base of the entire free world, and we’re not going to have it,” Bessent said. “China is a command and control economy. They are neither going to command nor control us.”
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