Reporter Asks Scott Bessent: Does Tariff Pause Make Trade War 'China Versus The Rest Of The World'

2 days ago

Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent answers reporters' questions after President Trump pauses most tariffs.

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Transcript

00:00Is this...

00:02Secretary, thank you for doing this.

00:06Let me ask you three quick things, in fact, just for the sake of clarity,

00:10because the markets are open and they're wondering.

00:12First of all, Mexico and China, are they part of this 10% universal?

00:16Well, China...

00:18Mexico and Canada. Mexico and Canada, are they part of the 10%?

00:21Yes.

00:22Okay. Second, given then that you have the rest of the world essentially calling it, it's not China,

00:26is this now just all about China?

00:29Well, it's about bad actors.

00:32And what we will see is some of the very early countries are China's neighbors that we're going to see.

00:40I'm seeing Vietnam today, Japan is in the front of the queue, South Korea, India.

00:45So we will see.

00:47And as I repeatedly said, and President Trump has been saying it for years,

00:52China is the most imbalanced economy in the history of the modern world,

00:56and they are the biggest source of the U.S. trade problems.

01:01And indeed, they are a problem for the rest of the world, because what we've seen is that,

01:07as the U.S. announced the tariff wall last week, many of those goods have already started flooding into Europe.

01:15So as you see it now, this trade war is China versus the rest of the world.

01:19Well, I'm not calling it a trade war, but I'm saying that China has escalated,

01:24and President Trump responded very courageously to that.

01:29And we are going to work on a solution with our trade.

Reporter Asks Scott Bessent: Does Tariff Pause Make Trade War 'China Versus The Rest Of The World'

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