Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that talks with China over trade are somewhat in limbo amid U.S. trade tensions with the country.
“I would say that they are a bit stalled,” Bessent told Fox News’s Bret Baier of U.S.-China trade talks. “I believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks, and I believe we may, at some point, have a call between the president and [Communist] Party Chair Xi [Jinping].”
On Wednesday, a federal court ruled that an emergency law did not give President Trump unilateral authority to impose tariffs on close to every country. The ruling blocked the president’s April “Liberation Day” tariffs and earlier orders putting tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday said judges on the court “brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump” after the ruling.
A federal appeals court later lifted the first ruling on Thursday, however, a separate federal court on the same day blocked the majority of the president’s tariffs.
The president’s tariff policy during his first few months back in the White House has strained American relationships with longtime allies like Canada and the European Union, driven up economic uncertainty and rattled markets across the globe.
Republican strategist Karl Rove said in a Wednesday opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal that Trump’s tariff rhetoric could cost the GOP its majorities in Congress.
“Republicans should hope the president really believes in reciprocity—the policy that if countries lower their tariffs, we’ll lower ours. He should have confidence that America can compete if the playing field is level,” Rove wrote.
