By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) – The United States is open to extending the US-China trade truce that expires on November 10 or looking at a more expansive trade deal, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday following his second meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng to prepare for a summit between the two countries’ leaders.
Bessent said Beijing raised the issue of a potentially bigger US-China trade deal during talks on Sunday, but gave no details of its potential scope. US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to continue the talks at the White House on Thursday.
“The Chinese on Sunday came up with the idea of a bigger deal, and given that this could be a historic year where the leaders meet up to four times — this being the second meeting, in Shenzhen and then in Miami — we’re open to the idea of just continuing the Busan arrangement or examining the bigger deal,” Bessent told reporters. “We’re fine with both, and we’re going to do what’s best for the American people.”
In a post on X, Bessent called the discussions substantive and said Treasury was focused on securing “meaningful commitments that protect American workers, farmers and businesses while advancing U.S. economic and national security interests.”
“Both sides remain actively engaged, and the talks are making progress on a range of important issues,” said a source familiar with the meetings, describing them as productive and constructive.
Bessent earlier said he was meeting with He at World Bank headquarters in Washington to clear up some “unfinished business” ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, adding that the Trump administration wanted strategic stability based on “reciprocity and fairness.”
His comments afterwards were the strongest signal yet that an extension of the trade truce struck last year in Busan, South Korea, was on the agenda for the Trump-Xi summit.
Bessent, He and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met in New York on Sunday in an effort to tee up potential trade and artificial intelligence agreements for the two leaders to consider. Bessent has characterized those talks as successful, saying both sides had agreed to launch a communications “hotline” for notifying each other about AI safety incidents.
China’s response to the AI hotline plan was unclear, with state news agency Xinhua acknowledging only that the two sides discussed AI.
US-China analysts say expectations on AI cooperation are low due to a lack of mutual trust on the technology and because neither side has expressed serious interest in slowing down development. In fact, Trump has said the opposite, that he would not “stifle” AI growth and would maintain the US lead over China in what he now calls “super intelligence.”
The Bessent-Greer-He meeting on Sunday left unresolved the fate of the nearly year-long trade truce between Washington and Beijing, which expires on November 10. The truce dramatically lowered bilateral tariff rates that had escalated to triple digits after tit-for-tat retaliation over Trump’s tariff hikes last year. China also had agreed to restore the flow of rare earth magnets and other critical minerals that it had severely restricted.
Greer told Bloomberg TV on Monday that discussions about extending the trade truce would continue because there was time.
“But my expectation is we’ll continue talking and I think both sides want it,” he said of a trade truce extension.
Greer added that the US needed to keep pressure on China to ensure compliance on its critical minerals agreements. US officials last week told reporters that the delivery of rare earths by China “has not been up to par.”
On Sunday, the two sides discussed other topics that had been previously discussed by Trump and Xi at a May meeting in Beijing, including lowering mutual tariffs on some non-strategic goods and Chinese purchases of Boeing aircraft and agricultural goods.
Greer had said the two sides agreed to “operationalize” a process agreed in May for each side to identify potential tariff cuts on non-strategic goods, called the “Board of Trade.” He said these could include Chinese exports such as “consumer goods, low-tech items,” while US exports for this treatment could include energy, agricultural goods and medical devices.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Lawder; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Writing by David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Daniel Wallis)
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