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US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Monday said Donald Trump and Xi Jinping still planned to meet this month despite a recent dramatic escalation in trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.
“I believe that meeting will still be on,” Bessent told Fox Business, referring to a planned summit during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea.
Trump last week lashed out at what he said was a “hostile” move by China after it imposed sweeping export controls on rare earths and critical minerals, saying there was “no reason” to meet Xi.
But he later said he might still meet the Chinese president since they would both be in South Korea for the Apec meeting.
Bessent said the US would meet with Chinese officials who are attending the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Washington this week. He added he was “optimistic” the two sides could de-escalate the situation, but said Washington was prepared to retaliate with “brute force countermeasures”.
“I believe that China is open to discussion,” Bessent said. “And if they’re not, we have substantial levers on our side that we can pull, the equivalent and probably even more aggressive than they have pulled on the rare earths.”
Asked whether the administration would consider removing Chinese companies from American stock exchanges, Bessent said: “Everything’s on the table.”
Bessent noted that the US had imposed several effective countermeasures earlier this year when China slowed the export of rare earths despite the two sides having reached a détente in the trade war at a meeting in Geneva.
He suggested the administration could target the more than 300,000 Chinese students in the US, noting that there were only 800 US students in China. Washington is also considering imposing restrictions on the export of software to China, but has not made clear what range of software would be included.
China’s sudden imposition of restrictions on the export of rare earths and critical minerals has threatened global supply chains and reignited trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. Bessent said it was a “provocative move” because the two sides had reduced tensions in recent months in preparation for a meeting between Trump and Xi.
On Sunday, China’s commerce ministry blamed the US for the escalation, saying Washington had imposed punitive measures on Chinese companies shortly after officials met in Madrid for their latest round of talks.
Trump on Friday said he would impose an additional 100 per cent tariff on imports from China on November 1 unless the two sides struck a deal. The leaders are expected to meet in Gyeongju, South Korea, on October 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.”
Trump struck what some experts interpreted as a more conciliatory note on Sunday, writing: “Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment . . . The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!”
But others said the US president might be lulling China into a false sense of security while his administration assembles packages of possible retaliatory actions.
Bessent said the Chinese actions may have been a “mistaken” effort to create leverage ahead of the meeting in South Korea. But he added that Xi may have been unaware that his officials had imposed restrictions on rare earths.