A senior member of US President Donald Trump’s economic team said on Sunday that Trump may speak with China’s President Xi Jinping “very soon”, adding that any such call could help break the impasse in trade talks between the world’s two biggest economies.
“I’m confident that when President Trump and Party Chairman Xi have a call that this will be ironed out,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, adding that China was “withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement”.
When asked if rare earths were one of the products he was referring to on CBS’s “Face the Nation”, Bessent acknowledged this was the case.
“Maybe it’s a glitch in the Chinese system. Maybe it’s intentional,” the former hedge manager said. “We’ll see after the president speaks with” Xi.
“I believe we will see something very soon,” Bessent said.
