Trump Xi likely to speak soon on minerals trade dispute Treasury s Bessent says

WASHINGTON - US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on June 1 that President Donald Trump could speak with China’s Xi Jinping “very soon,” and that such a call could help break the logjam in the trade talks between the world’s two biggest economies.

Mr Trump on May 30 accused Beijing of violating a deal reached in May in Geneva – negotiated by Mr Bessent – to temporarily lower staggeringly high tariffs they had imposed on each other, in a pause to last 90 days.

China’s slow-walking on export license approvals for rare earths and other elements needed to make cars and chips have fueled US frustration, The Wall Street Journal reported on May 30 – a concern since confirmed by US officials.

But Mr Bessent seemed to take the pressure down a notch, telling CBS’s Face the Nation that the gaps could be bridged.

“I’m confident that when President Trump and Party Chairman Xi have a call that this will be ironed out,” Mr Bessent said, however noting that China was “withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement.”

When asked if rare earths were one of those products, Mr Bessent said, “Yes.”

“Maybe it’s a glitch in the Chinese system. Maybe it’s intentional. We’ll see after the president speaks with” Xi, he said.

On when a Trump-Xi call could take place, Mr Bessent said: “I believe we will see something very soon.”

Since Mr 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 in May, where Washington agreed to temporarily reduce additional tariffs on Chinese imports from 145 per cent to 30 per cent.

China, meanwhile, lowered its added