During Tuesday's White House press briefing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about US-China trade negotiation meetings.
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00:00The Press.
00:01The Press.
00:02Thank you so much, Caroline.
00:03Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
00:04The Chinese continue to say that the U.S. and Chinese
00:07are not engaged in any consultation or negotiation on tariffs.
00:11You recently said you've talked to your counterpart,
00:14but more about, quote, traditional things,
00:16like financial stability.
00:17So can you clarify, is the administration talking to Beijing
00:21specifically about tariffs or not?
00:24Well, we're not going to talk about who's talking to whom,
00:26but I think that, you know, over time,
00:29we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China.
00:34I've seen some very large numbers over the past few days
00:39that show if these numbers stay on,
00:41Chinese could lose 10 million jobs very quickly,
00:44and even if there is a drop in the tariffs,
00:47that they could lose 5 million jobs.
00:50So remember that we are the deficit country.
00:54They sell almost five times more goods to us
00:57than we sell to them.
00:59So the onus will be on them to take off these tariffs.
01:05They're unsustainable for them.
01:07And they are saying you guys are not talking about it.
01:09So is that true?
01:10Look, they have a different form of government they're playing
01:14to a different audience.
01:16So I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty, again,
01:20of who's talking to whom.
01:22But as I said, I believe for the Chinese,
01:26these tariffs are unsustainable.
01:28And very quickly, two days ago, you said you didn't know
01:31if President Trump had spoken to Xi Jinping.
01:33Do you know now?
01:34Again, I would say Caroline and I have a lot of jobs
01:37around the White House running the switchboard in one of them.
01:40Bluebird, go ahead.
01:41Bluebird, go ahead.