Bessent: China’s Xi, Trump Could Meet Four Times This Year

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview Thursday that the U.S. relationship with China has reached a “very good equilibrium” where disagreements are less likely to turn into full-scale economic conflict as they did last year.

Bessent, who spoke in Davos with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for an episode of “The Conversation,” said President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping could meet up to four times this year and have a productive rapport.

“When the leaders are setting the tone for the overall relationship, if there are glitches, if there are hiccups, then they can jump on phone calls and de-escalate very quickly,” he said.

The Treasury chief said he’d met on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng, where he was told that the Chinese are committed to implementing the deal hammered out by Trump and Xi.

“We are going to hold their feet to the fire,” Bessent said. “But they have done everything that they said they were going to do. They actually completed their soybean purchases last week, their full allocation. Just like President Trump, I urge them to do more, but it’s not required. Just would be a goodwill gesture.”

The tone is a marked shift from early on in Trump’s term, when the president announced steep tariffs on China, sparking retaliation from Beijing that brought tariffs to levels that amounted to essentially a trade embargo between the two nations. The Treasury secretary himself helped broker the deal that ultimately cooled tensions, although there have been flareups as recently as last fall.

Bessent listed multiple opportunities for the two world leaders to meet this year: Trump’s visit to Beijing in April, a potential summer trip by Xi “either to DC or Mar-a-Lago” and the G20 in Miami. He also said Trump has “expressed an interest” in going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shenzhen, China.

“If we have this series of meetings to move toward, then no one really wants to upset anything,” he said.

Attention during the conference in Davos has been centered on U.S. foreign policy moves, particularly Trump’s push for U.S. control of the Danish territory Greenland. The president announced Wednesday that he had reached a framework deal with NATO’s leader regarding the Arctic.

Bessent, for his part, would not speak to whether that framework would result in American ownership of the island.

“I’m not going to get out ahead of the negotiations, but I think everyone is going to be satisfied with this,” he said. “I think it will fortify NATO. I think it will suit the president’s objectives, and again, he views Greenland as essential to the U.S. Golden Dome missile shield.”

The Treasury chief also responded to a much-watched speech from ​​​​Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said the global rules-based order had been rendered “fiction” and urged smaller countries to forge new strategic alliances to keep from being subjugated by “great powers.”

“Prime Minister Carney should do what’s best for Canada,” Bessent said. “If he believes what’s best for Canada is to make speeches like that, which I don’t think is very helpful, then he should make speeches like that.”