<figure id="attachment_3074690" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3074690" style="width: 1600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-3074690" src="https://media.freemalaysiatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/cfac5a20-donald-trump-xi-jinping.jpg" alt="Donald Trump Xi Jinping" width="1600" height="1000" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-3074690" class="wp-caption-text">US President Donald Trump participates in a welcoming ceremony with China’s President Xi Jinping during his 2017 visit to Beijing. (Reuters pic)</figcaption></figure>
WASHINGTON: A logjam in the trade talks between the US and China could be broken once Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping speak, US officials said Sunday &#8211; a conversation they said could happen soon.
Trump on Friday accused Beijing of violating a deal reached last month in Geneva to temporarily lower staggeringly high tariffs the world&#8217;s two biggest economies had imposed on each other, in a pause to last 90 days.
China&#8217;s slow-walking on export licence approvals for rare earths and other elements needed to make cars and chips have fuelled US frustration, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday &#8211; a concern since confirmed by US officials.
But US treasury secretary Scott Bessent seemed to take the pressure down a notch on Sunday, telling CBS&#8217;s &#8220;Face the Nation&#8221; that the gaps could soon be bridged.
&#8220;I&#8217;m confident that when President Trump and Party Chairman Xi have a call that this will be ironed out,&#8221; Bessent said, however noting that China was &#8220;withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement.&#8221;
When asked if rare earths were one of those products, Bessent said, &#8220;Yes.&#8221;
&#8220;Maybe it&#8217;s a glitch in the Chinese system. Maybe it&#8217;s intentional. We&#8217;ll see after the president speaks with&#8221; Xi, he said.
On when a Trump-Xi call could take place, Bessent said: &#8220;I believe we will see something very soon.&#8221;
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House&#8217;s National Economic Council told ABC that the call could happen &#8220;this week&#8221; but that he had no confirmation of a scheduled time.
Since Trump returned to the presidency, he has slapped sweeping tariffs on most US trading partners, with especially high rates on Chinese imports.
New tit-for-tat levies on both sides reached three digits before the de-escalation this month, where Washington agreed to temporarily reduce additional tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30%.
China, meanwhile, lowered its added duties from 125% to 10%.
Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick told &#8220;Fox News Sunday&#8221; that China was &#8220;slow-rolling the deal,&#8221; adding: &#8220;We are taking certain actions to show them what it feels like on the other side of that equation.&#8221;
&#8220;Our president understands what to do. He&#8217;s going to go work it out,&#8221; Lutnick said.
Lutnick also said that a US court battle over Trump&#8217;s tariff strategy &#8211; one court&#8217;s ruling to block the tariffs has been stayed pending an appeal &#8211; would ultimately end with a win for the president.
&#8220;Tariffs are not going away,&#8221; Lutnick said.
&#8216;We&#8217;ve got to be ready&#8217;
Separate from the China deal, Trump said Friday he would double sector-specific tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50% starting June 4 &#8211; sparking ire from the European Union, which said it would retaliate.
Hassett said China&#8217;s dumping of low-cost steel was hurting US industry &#8211; which in turn was hindering US military preparedness.
&#8220;The bottom line is that we&#8217;ve got to be ready in case things don&#8217;t happen the way we want, because if we have cannons but not cannonballs, then we can&#8217;t fight a war,&#8221; Hassett told &#8220;This Week.&#8221;
&#8220;And if we don&#8217;t have steel, then the US isn&#8217;t ready, and we&#8217;re not preparing ourselves for something,&#8221; he added.
&#8220;We have to have a steel industry that&#8217;s ready for American defence.&#8221;

MatchPoint Times

US says trade row with China could ease after Trump-Xi talks

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent expects a conversation soon between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies.

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