(May 14): Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US and China are discussing a mechanism for fast-tracking some Chinese investment deals, along with a reduction in tariffs on a swath of non-critical goods as the world’s largest economies try to manage their rivalry.
“We’re going to talk about a ‘Board of Investment’ that will be responsible for investment in non-sensitive areas,” Bessent said in an interview with CNBC in Beijing on Thursday.
Bessent is accompanying President Donald Trump on the first visit of a US president to China since 2017, when Trump last went. On the economic front, the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping aims to build on the trade-war truce that the two leaders agreed on at their last meeting, in October in South Korea.
US officials have previously unveiled plans for a “Board of Trade” that would manage commercial ties. Bessent said on Thursday that one idea is to remove tariffs on about US$30 billion worth of trade “for non-critical areas and areas that we’re not trying to reshore”.
“Something like fireworks are very low-end consumer goods that are going to keep coming from China no matter what — so we can un-tariff those,” Bessent said. “There are many things that they want to buy from us — there was talk today about the Chinese buying more US energy.”
Pre-gaming CFIUS
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Asked about a report that the US had approved 10 Chinese firms to purchase Nvidia Corp’s advanced H200 AI chips, Bessent said, “This is news to me. I know there’s been a lot of back-and-forth on the H200s, and we’ll have to see on that.” He noted the Commerce Department has responsibility for the issue.
Bessent also said he wasn’t sure where speculation of talks about US$1 trillion of investment from China had come from.
As for a “Board of Investment,” the Treasury secretary said the idea is to have a mechanism that could allow deals that wouldn’t need to be referred to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) — a review panel that he chairs, which can block foreign companies from acquiring US assets.
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“There are plenty of things that the Chinese could invest in,” he said. “What we want to do is make sure that these investments don’t get referred to CFIUS.”
The board could “pre-game” those deals to make sure they aren’t in strategic or sensitive areas, he said.
Asked about the issue of Taiwan, Bessent said no US-China summit would unfold without the matter coming up. China claims the self-governed island as it own, while Washington has long supplied it with arms for its defence. Bessent said he wouldn’t get ahead of any Trump remarks on the issue, while underlining that the president understands the sensitivities about it.
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