The United States will encourage G-20 members to re-examine terms of trade with China to shrink global imbalances and press Beijing to rebalance its economy away from exports and toward domestic consumption, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday.
Bessent said in an interview ahead of a G-20 finance leaders meeting that the current flood of exports from China was unsustainable, even though the U.S. direct trade position with China was "rapidly improving."
"The world cannot have a China with a $1.2 trillion trade surplus," Bessent said. "In China, the economy is quite weak, and they are trying to export their way out of it, and they need to rebalance their economy."
Bessent's push to mobilize a coordinated trade response to China comes as legal setbacks force the U.S. to rebuild its tariff policy, which had sharply reduced imports from China but led to an influx of Chinese imports elsewhere, especially to Europe and Latin America.
The U.S. has walled off its economy from many Chinese goods with high tariffs and outright bans on some products, including autos. Bessent said he told other industrial economies last year they would face pressures from the China import surge and that "now they are confronted with some very stark choices."
