The president of the United States, Donald Trump, answers the questions of the journalists after leaving the Navy in the White House in Washington, DC, on April 27, 2025.
Ken cedeno | Reuters
On Monday, China, once again, denied that it is in conversations to resolve its tariff war with the United States, after a series of statements by President Donald Trump and his assistants who suggest that trade negotiations were underway.
“Let me make clear one more than China and the United States do not participate in any consultation or negotiation on tariffs,” said the spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Jiakun, at a press conference.
Guo also seemed to reject Trump’s claim, in an interview with Time last week, that Chinese President Xi Jinping had called him.
“As far as I know, there is no call between the two presidents recently,” said the spokesman.
The last general denial was in line with the hard line posture of Beijing against the massive rates of 145% of Trump in the imports of China, a main provider of US goods.
Trump administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Besent, insist that the United States is better positioned to win a commercial war than China.
But US business and analysts are increasing alarms that the effective commercial embargo with China could soon lead to important economic consequences, including high prices, product shortage and store closure.
In that context, and Trump’s recent statement that his administration will be completed with new trade agreements with numerous countries in just three or four weeks, some US officials have expressed more open a dialogue with Beijing.
“Every day we are talking with China,” Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, on Sunday at CNN, said on Sunday.
When the Chinese deny this, Rollins said: “Well, according to our team in Washington, conversations are ongoing with respect to trade multiples, multiples of commercial goods that come out and enter.”
“The final result with China is this: they need us more than we need them,” he said.
When he was asked Sunday why China would deny that the negotiations are underway, Besent said: “Well, I think they are playing for a different audience.”
Pressing to explain whether the conversations are happening real, he said: “We have a process in its place. And again, I think that Chinese thesis rates are unsustainable.”
Besent predicted last week that a “broken” with China approached in the “very close future.”
On Monday morning, he pointed out that possible decalcalation to help explain why he was not yet worried that US consumers could face empty store shelves.
“Not today,” Besent in Fox News said when asked if he was worried about the “empty shelves.”
“We have some excellent retailers. I guess they reserved. I think we will see some elasticies and I think we will see replacements, and then we will see how fast the Chinese because they break down,” Besent said.
In a separate interview on Monday morning in “Squawk Box” by CNBC, Besent put responsibility for that decalciation in China, before saying that I would not negotiate through the press.
China has constantly demanded that Trump, which has delayed tariffs as a powerful negotiation tool and a way of raising government income, discarding its broad import taxes.
“If the United States really waded an eye to solve the problem … should cancel all unilateral measures in China,” said a spokesman for the China Ministry of Commerce last week.
That statement, translated from Mandarin by CNBC, was in itself an answer to Trump’s statement on Thursday that US and Chinese officials “had a meeting this morning.”
“We have been meeting with China,” Trump told journalists, while we declined Espey who was fulfilling who.
A day before, Trump said US officials were “actively” talking to China.
