U.S. President Donald Trump expressed interestiFriday n repairing the latest rift with China after accusing it of violating a trade agreement struck with the U.S. in Geneva earlier this month.
"They violated a big part of the agreement," Trump said at an Oval Office event on Friday. "I'm sure that I'll speak to President Xi, and hopefully we'll work that out."
The latest escalation came when the president wrote on Truth Social that "China has totally violated its agreement" with the U.S. Earlier in the day, Treasury Scott Bessent said talks with Beijing had become "a bit stalled."
The issues is that China has failed to restore exports of some rare-earth magnets used for electric motors, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC on Friday. China is the global leader in rare-earth mineral mining and processing.
"We haven't seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing." Greer said.
Bessent said Thursday that getting to a permanent trade agreement between the two biggest economies may require a meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The U.S. court decision limiting Trump's power to impose tariffs may have complicated negotiations with China. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that the Trump didn't have the authority to implement the broad levies on nearly all countries announced on April 2. The next day, an appeals court on the federal circuit said the tariffs can remain in effect while it hears arguments.
Meanwhile, the president's trade team is exploring other ways it might be able to impose the taxes on imports, The Wall Street Journal reported. They include a stopgap measure that would allow tariffs for 150 days under a never-before-used provision of the Trade Act of 1974, as well as a longer-term notification process that is more legally defensible, the report said.
"Of course these are things that we've been considering and talking about for a very long time," Greer told CNBC when asked about using the 1974 trade act. "All these things are on the table."
In a post late Thursday, Trump criticized the court that struck down his tariffs, which he said are making the U.S. richer. He also speculated that the Supreme Court may reverse the decision for good. "Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY," he wrote.
"If we didn't have the power of tariffs we'd be economically destroyed as a country," Trump said Friday at the White House.
For now, the tariffs remain in effect, even though most of them have been suspended while trade talks with partners continue. Other sector-specific taxes on things like steel and aluminum had different legal justifications and are unaffected by the latest court rulings.
In any case, it still looks like higher taxes on imported goods will become the norm under Trump.
