By Jesse Pound
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that he expects to meet with Chinese officials again in the coming weeks to continue trade negotiations.
“I would imagine in the next few weeks we will be meeting again to get rolling on a more fulsome agreement,” Bessent said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The exact details of the meeting, such as location, have not been set, but there is now a “mechanism” for further talks, Bessent said.
The comments come after the U.S. and China announced a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs the countries had imposed on one another, following a meeting between Bessent, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese officials in Switzerland over the weekend.
“What we have with the Chinese is a mechanism to avoid upward tariff pressure,” Bessent said Monday.
Under the 90-day pause, both countries lowered their baseline tariff rate by 115 percentage points to 10%. The 20% fentanyl-related tariff from the U.S. remains in place, so most Chinese goods face a 30% rate in total, down from 145% previously.
Bessent said there was a “very long and in-depth sidebar” regarding fentanyl between two officials at the meeting.
“I think that we saw here in Geneva that the Chinese are now serious about assisting the U.S. in stopping the flow of precursor drugs,” Bessent said.
Global stock markets rallied sharply on Monday after the tariff pause was announced, and U.S. equity futures pointed to a jump when the market opens in New York.
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