Bessent, Scott

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    in Economy

    China Rejects Trump Claim of Tariff Talks With Xi

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    President Trump said that “we’re meeting with China” on tariffs, comments aimed at soothing jittery financial markets. But Chinese officials say no talks have taken place.President Trump, whose trade war with China has rattled financial markets and threatened to disrupt huge swaths of trade, suggested on Friday that he had been in touch with Xi Jinping, China’s president, even as Chinese officials insisted that no negotiations were occurring.In an interview with Time on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said Mr. Xi had called him, though he declined to say when, and asserted that his team was in active talks with China on a trade deal. Asked about the interview outside the White House on Friday morning, the president reiterated that he had spoken with the Chinese president “numerous times,” but he refused to answer when pressed on whether any call had happened after he imposed tariffs this month.Mr. Trump’s comments appeared aimed at creating the impression of progress with China to soothe jittery financial markets, which have fallen amid signs that the world’s largest economies are in a standoff. The S&P 500 is down 10 percent since Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.But the president’s claims of talks have been rejected by Chinese officials, who have repeatedly denied this week that they are actively negotiating with the United States.“China and the U.S. have not held consultations or negotiations on the issue of tariffs,” Guo Jiakun, the spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said in a news conference on Friday. “The United States should not confuse the public.”Chinese officials have repeatedly said the United States should stop threatening China and engage in dialogue on the basis of equality and respect. On Thursday, He Yadong, a spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry, said there were “no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

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    Scott Bessent Accuses IMF and World Bank of ‘Mission Creep’

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    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday called for major overhauls to the missions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank but said the United States remained committed to maintaining its leadership role at the global economic institutions.The comments, at a speech on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the I.M.F. and the World Bank, come at a moment of concern among policymakers that the Trump administration could withdraw the United States entirely from the fund and the bank.The United States has upended the global trading system in recent months, and the views of the Trump administration on climate change, international development and economic equity are often at odds with those of the other nations that are shareholders in the global institutions.On Tuesday, the I.M.F. downgraded its outlook for growth globally and in the United States as a result of President Trump’s punishing tariffs. Trade tension between the United States and China, the world’s largest economies, threaten to weigh on output this year and next.In his remarks, Mr. Bessent defended the Trump administration’s trade actions and called for China to curb economic practices that he said were destabilizing international commerce. He noted that the United States was engaged in trade talks with dozens of countries and expressed optimism that these negotiations would help rebalance the world economy and make the global trading system more fair.It remains unclear when, or if, the United States and China will begin to engage in talks. Mr. Trump has said he expects to speak with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, but no formal conversations have been scheduled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 88 Shares159 Views

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    Peter Navarro: The Architect of Trump’s Tariffs

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    On a clear day last July in Miami, Peter Navarro emerged from four months in federal prison, where he’d been imprisoned for contempt of Congress. Mr. Navarro had refused to testify in an investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, an action he described as a defense of the Constitution.Just hours after his release from prison, Mr. Navarro flew to Milwaukee to speak at the Republican National Convention in support of Donald J. Trump’s re-election.“They convicted me, they jailed me. Guess what? They did not break me,” he said that night, punctuating each word as the crowd roared. It was an exercise in loyalty to Mr. Trump that seems to have paid off.For much of Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Navarro, a trade adviser, had been sidelined, mocked and minimized by other officials who saw his protectionist views on trade as factually wrong and dangerous for the country.But in the second Trump administration, Mr. Navarro, 75, an economist and trade skeptic, has been newly empowered. He returned to government more confident in his revanchist vision for the American economy, more dismissive of his critics, and with more than a dozen trade-related executive orders already drafted, many of which the president has since signed. Mr. Trump also came back to Washington more determined to finally realize the trade views he has held for decades, that an unfair trading system was ripping America off and needed to be radically changed.Why Peter Navarro switched sidesAna Swanson explains how China’s entry into the World Trade Organization turned Navarro, a Southern California professor, into President Trump’s biggest trade warrior.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 150 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    The Trump Billionaires Who Run the Economy and the Things They Say

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    “You have to laugh to keep from crying,” one Republican pollster said about recent comments by the billionaires on the stock market, retirement funds and Social Security.Sometimes the billionaires running the federal government sound like they’re talking to other billionaires.“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” President Trump wrote on social media last week, offering a stock tip that appeared aimed at the investor class rather than ordinary Americans watching their plummeting 401(k)s.Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, has said his mother-in-law wouldn’t be worried if she didn’t get her monthly Social Security check. Elon Musk, who is slashing the Social Security Administration’s staff, has called it a “Ponzi scheme.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has asserted that Americans aren’t looking at the “day-to-day fluctuations” in their retirement savings.And if automakers raise their prices because of Mr. Trump’s tariffs? “I couldn’t care less,” the president told Kristen Welker of NBC.Democrats say the comments show how clueless Mr. Trump and his friends are about the lives of most Americans, and that this is what happens when billionaires run the economy. Republicans counter that highlighting the quotes is unfair cherry picking, and that in the long run everyone will benefit from their policies, even if there’s pain now. Psychologists say that extreme wealth does change people and their views of those who have less.Whoever is right, it is safe to say that almost no one thinks the comments have been politically helpful for Mr. Trump, or calming for Americans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 138 Shares139 Views

    in Economy

    Bessent Takes Tricky Center Stage as Trade Wars Roil U.S. Economy

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    The Treasury secretary received counsel and criticism from some of his predecessors over President Trump’s policies.The traditional gathering of former Treasury secretaries to welcome a newly minted one into the fold is usually a lighthearted and pleasant affair. But when the group convened this month, on President Trump’s “Liberation Day,” the tone was strikingly serious.The dinner, organized by former Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, took place at a moment of tumult for the U.S. economy. The president had upended global trade with punishing tariffs on both allies and adversaries, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was at the center of it, defending a policy that many in the room viewed as economic malpractice.“The mood was somber,” said W. Michael Blumenthal, 99, who led the Treasury Department in the Carter administration and was in attendance.Mr. Bessent was pressed over the strategy behind the tariffs and the impact that they would have on the economy, according to Mr. Blumenthal and other people familiar with the dinner. At times, Mr. Bessent elevated his voice when his predecessors confronted him about Mr. Trump’s approach.“He didn’t just smile,” Mr. Blumenthal recalled. “There he is — he has to defend it.”The guest list included Robert E. Rubin, Henry M. Paulson, Lawrence H. Summers, Timothy F. Geithner and Jack Lew. Former Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen was traveling in Australia and did not attend, a spokesman said.The Treasury Department declined to comment on the dinner, and Mr. Bessent declined to comment for this article.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 138 Shares159 Views

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    Inside Trump’s Reversal on Tariffs: From ‘Be Cool!’ to ‘Getting Yippy’

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    Economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused President Trump to reverse course on the steep levies.For the past week, President Trump has been urging calm in the face of the financial chaos that he created and resisting calls for him to rethink his approach.“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he told Republicans on Tuesday as the massive tariffs he had imposed sent global markets into a tailspin. “BE COOL!” he said in a social media post on Wednesday morning. “Everything is going to work out well.”At 9:37 a.m. Wednesday, the president was still bullish on his policy, posting on Truth Social: “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”But in the end, it was the markets that got him to reverse course.The economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields, caused Mr. Trump to blink on Wednesday afternoon and pause his “reciprocal” tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days, according to four people with direct knowledge of the president’s decision.Asked to explain the decision, Mr. Trump told reporters: “Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”Behind the scenes, senior members of Mr. Trump’s team had feared a financial panic that could spiral out of control and potentially devastate the economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others on the president’s team, including Vice President JD Vance, had been pushing for a more structured approach to the trade conflict that would focus on isolating China as the worst actor while still sending a broader message that Mr. Trump was serious about cracking down on trade imbalances.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Economy

    Trump Reverses Course on Global Tariffs, Announcing 90-Day Pause

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    The president further raised already steep tariffs on China, saying that Beijing should not have retaliated against his earlier trade actions.President Trump on Wednesday abruptly reversed course on steep global tariffs that have roiled markets, upset members of his own party and raised fears of a recession. Just hours after he put punishing levies into place on nearly 60 countries, the president said he would pause them for 90 days.But Mr. Trump did not extend that pause to China, opting instead to raise tariffs again on all Chinese imports, bringing those taxes to a whopping 125 percent. That decision came after Beijing raised its levies on American goods to 84 percent on Wednesday afternoon in an escalating tit-for-tat between the world’s largest economies.In a post on Truth Social, the president said that he had authorized “a 90 day PAUSE” in which countries would face “a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff” of 10 percent. As a result, nearly every U.S. trading partner now faces a 10 percent blanket tariff, on top of 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump has imposed on cars, steel and aluminum.Slumping markets quickly rallied after Mr. Trump’s post. The S&P 500 climbed several percentage points in a matter of minutes and closed with a rise of more than 9 percent, sharply reversing days of losses. Wednesday was the best day for the S&P 500 since the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.Nearly every stock in the index rose. Airlines, some tech companies and Tesla were among those companies to soar over 20 percent. Shares of automakers rose sharply even though 25 percent tariffs on imported cars remain in place. Ford and General Motors both rose more than 7 percent.Mr. Trump, who for days had insisted he was not concerned about the market rout, acknowledged on Wednesday that the downturn had fed into his decision.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

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    Trump Maintains 104% China Tariffs as U.S. Officials Signal Openness to Talks

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    President Trump’s next round of punishing tariffs on some of America’s largest trading partners was set to go into effect just after midnight on Wednesday, including stiff new levies that will increase import taxes on Chinese goods by at least 104 percent.Mr. Trump acknowledged on Tuesday that his tariffs had been “somewhat explosive.” But throughout the day he continued to defend his approach, saying that it was encouraging countries with what he calls “unfair” trade practices to offer concessions.“We have a lot of countries coming in to make deals,” he said during remarks at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. At a dinner with Congressional Republicans in Washington later that evening, he said other countries wanted to make a deal with the United States but he was happy just collecting the revenue from tariffs, which he claimed would reach $2 billion a day.“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said, adding that he would be announcing “a major tariff on pharmaceuticals” very shortly.The president and top administration officials signaled on Tuesday that the White House was ready to negotiate deals, saying that 70 governments had approached the United States to try to roll the levies back. Mr. Trump said officials would begin talks with Japan, South Korea and other nations.The president, whose punitive and successive tariffs on China have triggered a potentially economically damaging trade war, also said he was open to talking to Beijing about a deal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More