Duties, Bessent tries to cool the front with China: "Soon Trump-Xi meeting"

MILAN – US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is approaching the Trump-Xi meeting to address the issue of tariffs between the US and China and is trying to reassure the markets: the US will never default.

Speaking to CBS , Bessent said trade tensions between Washington and Beijing could be resolved after a meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping could happen "very soon".

Words that try to put out the fire lit last Friday by the US president himself, when he accused Beijing of not having respected the terms of the de-escalation agreement reached by the two superpowers after two days of negotiations in mid-May, in Geneva. An agreement that led the US and China to cut their reciprocal tariffs to 30 and 10 percent respectively, with the commitment to reach a comprehensive agreement. "China is withholding essential products from the supply chains of India and Europe, and that is not what a reliable trading partner does," Bessent continued. "I am confident that when Trump and Xi Jinping communicate, this issue can be resolved."

The Wall Street Journal reconstructed the reasons that annoyed the White House, focusing on China's slowness in issuing new export licenses for rare earths and other components needed for semiconductors and cars. "The fact that China is holding back some of the products that they agreed to supply in our deal may be due to a flaw in the Chinese system, or maybe it's intentional. We'll see what happens" after the meeting, Bessent added, referring to the issue of rare earths. Ideas that echo what was also said by the tariff hawk, the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick according to whom China is "just buying time to implement the agreement" and in any case Trump "knows what he has to do and he will find a solution, I believe".

Staying on more market-related issues, the Treasury Secretary then reassured on the stability of American public accounts, saying that "the United States will never default on its debt", in view of the passage in the Senate of the budget bill approved by the House. An act that entails, according to the calculations of the Congressional Budget Office, 2.3 trillion of additional deficit over the next five years. On the table is the request to raise the debt limit by mid-July, in order to avoid default. Bessento's words are an indirect response to the concerns raised on Friday by Jamie Dimon, CEO of the first US bank JPMorgan Chase , according to whom the US bond market could "collapse" under the weight of the increase in the country's debt.