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I'm now joined in Beijing on the sidelines of this summit between President Trump and Shijiping with the United States Trade Ambassador Jamis Ingreer. Ambassador gre thank you so much for joining us.
It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
So let's start with some of the trade agreements, potentially the purchasing agreements we could see come out of this. The President was talking earlier to some of the press about Boeing jets, about two hundred of them, a lot of report and going into this was maybe they'd get as high as five hundred. We saw last night. Maybe a sign of goodwill. China renew licenses for beef. Imports are there, soybeans are their energy? Can you walk us through some of the deliverables.
Yeah, I'm happy to do that.
So remember, we're in a situation where we're trying to rebalance our trade with China.
We've had a lot of success in that. Our trade deathsit with.
China went down by a third last year in one year, and so we're trying to manage the trade around the kinds of things we want to be selling to China, whether it's Boeings or soybeans or other ag or energy or devices, and so you can see us bit by bit building up this strategy coming out of this week. You heard the President today talk about the Boeings and
hundreds of Boeings being purchased by China. We already have a soybean deal with them from our prior meetings of twenty five million metric tons a year over the next three years, and we expect to also see an agreement for double digit billion purchases of ags over the next three years per year coming out of this visit. And that's more general, that's aggregate, that's not just soybeans, that's everything else.
Are they keeping up with those agreements?
They have been so on the soybeans.
You know, last year they needed to fill up twelve million metric tons at the end of last year.
They did that.
They've now you know, we expect most of the soybean sales to go on in the later part of the year, but we've seen some there already. We saw, as you noted, things related to beef ex sports registrations re upped last night. So we're already seeing them start to fulfill some of their promises.
When it comes to the daytant we have this trade agreement truce till October. Will that be extended on this trip.
So we'll see about that. We have, of course the.
Agreement that goes until this fall. That's all, that's all solid, that's all well and good. There's certainly a willingness on both sides that if this continues to work out well for each country to continue that and to extend this ability to make sure we're getting rare earths, that we're selling the types of things we should be selling to China, and we're trying to manage differences rather than escalate them.
We hear that some firms China is dragging their feet when it comes to licenses on rare earths.
Was this discussed? We do discuss this. We discussed this at all levels.
So do you think they are dragging their feet?
So with a couple of things, sometimes they do. I would I would give I would give them a passing grade on this. We've certainly seen the rare earths come back up to better levels. Sometimes it's slow. There are times when we have to go and make our point. You may have seen a couple of weeks ago there were some big shipments of virture that came across that
was after advocacy from the US government. So whenever we see an issue or we hear from specific companies, we engage with our Chinese counterparts and we find them to be constructive.
Where does this leave the three oh one tariffs? Does well China view this as retaliatory given the fact that it seems like the relationship right now is stable and you're in the middle of the state tunt So.
I haven't yet met a country where we've imposed tariffs and said thank you, we love these tariffs. So no one really likes that other than our workers in our industries. What Chinese know and what we've agreed that there's going to be a certain level of tariff on the Chinese.
So I think as we're rolling out and concluding different investigations under Section three oh one, which again don't just target China, they cover other countries as well, I think the Chinese are going to be looking at what we're doing there compared to agreements we've had in the past on certain tariff levels, and we'll just have to try to manage that.
Will you get to the rate that the United States was at on China before the Supreme Court struck down IEP and the funtional ten percent.
Well, I can't prejudge the outcome of these investigations. They are a legal process. They're ongoing right now. We've received comment, We've had hearings. We'll release the findings of these investigations within the next several weeks, and we'll propose action if we think we need to take action. And so if tariffs are part of that action, you know the world will see them, will be very transparent in public and people will be able to comment on that as well.
So I can't really commit to a given rate or not at this point. We have to go through the investigation.
We have did a discussion on the Board of Trade. When does that begin. There's a lot of reporting. It's about thirty billion dollars of goods on both sides. Is this all accurate?
That's right?
And so at the end of this meeting we'll go back to the US and the Chinese will be here. What we intend to do on the US side is is put out a call for public comment first and foremost and saying, hey, we're trying to manage this trade
with China. We want to focus on nonsensitive goods we think we should be selling them things we think we should be buying from them, trying to facilitate trade in that area, and then we'll from there we'll be able to interact with our Chinese colleagues and negotiate with them over where we think we have the strongest mutually beneficial trade with our countries.
Is there a chance though, that with this Board of Trade there'll be some goods coming from China that are a lower tariff rate than maybe an ally of the United States.
I mean, I don't think we're comparing it necessarily to allies. And if you look at the President's tariff program over the past year, are there as certain things that never have really been subject to tariff? You know, energy, energy goods, you know, certain foods, you know, fertilizers, things like that have never been subject to tariffs. There are certain things that we should be buying from China, I think, just like there are other countries or we should be buying things.
You saw the President a week ago he told the UK We're not going to have a tariff on whiskey from the UK. So it's not out of the norm of what this administration is doing to have nuance and how we're approaching it, kind of picking and choosing how we want to trade with countries.
When it comes to Nvidia and Chips, I bring this up because a lot of talk about Jensen Wong. You were on Air Force one, I mean, were you surprised to see him in Alaska at the refuel stop and getting on board. And there's a lot of speculation that something would be done here with chips. When it comes to the H two hundreds in January of the United States greenlit Chinese firms to be able to buy them, Will China allow their companies to buy them?
Well, obviously that's going to be a software decision for China. With export controls, they're fluid, right, they change over time. It depends on what threats you see, what's commercially available worldwide, what the Chinese can already do, and so you want to make sure you strike a balance between national security, protecting high tech, but also making sure that we're benefiting from overseas markets. And so those are the kinds of things that went into the H two hundred decision as
to whether the Chinese are going to buy or not. Again, they're making their own determinations. They're very committed to domestic production. They often see US high tech as it sometimes as a threat to them because we're if we're ahead of the game like we are on AI chips, sometimes they feel that that can stop their own growth. Obviously, we think it can be helpful to them in the long run, but they'll just have to make their decision on them.
But there's a lot of speculation that this would be a tangible talking point at the table because of the presence of the Nvidia boss. Did this come up Semiconductors?
Well, so we have fifteen to seventeen American business leaders here, and they had actually the opportunity yesterday in a meeting with President Trump and President Sheet to come in talk a little bit about their company. So Jensen was there. He spoke about Nvidia. We also had a variety of other folks there, you know, Cargil, Brian Sykes, and a variety of other companies.
So all these things come up.
This was not a major topic of discussion at the bilateral meeting. We did not talk about chipexport controls at the meeting.
When it comes to the Bussan deal, you're really building on that. But since then, what we've seen China do is they've put in a lot of regulations and laws that actually make it difficult for American companies to get a foothold here, and some of them are even contradictory to some US laws, mean that doing business here in China they'd be against US law.
Did this come up?
Do you find it harder or easier for American businesses to gain access to this market?
Well, we have raised this with our counterparts.
The Chinese in the past couple of weeks put into place supply chain rules that when I read them, it looks to me like they're saying if you're trying to reshuffle your supply chain or get closer to the United States or something like that, they might.
Punish you, which a lot of firms are doing.
So that's a strong concern for me. The thing to remember is with the Boosan Agreement what we're doing now. They build on each other, but they're not comprehensive. They don't solve every problem in the relationship. That's why something like the Board of Trade were focused on nonsensitive trade, because we know we're going to have differences in these other areas.
Whether it's export controls.
Or high tech or critical infrastructure or things like that. So those are issues that we raise and we talk about, but we also try to be constructive.
But I do wonder you, as a critical individual on China in the past, the rules, regulations, the subsidies they give to their companies, do you actually welcome that in a sense that you can say to us businesses, this is what I've been telling you, this is why it is hard to do business in China, and these are some of the traps that are set in place.
Yeah, I guess what I would say is I am clear out on these things, and I think it's helpful for our companies to be clear eyed as well. And I think they are a lot more realistic about their expectations about operating in China's market and selling into this market than they were three years ago, certainly more than they were five years ago. So when these things happen, it's good for our companies to realize the objectives of the Chinese government the Chinese economy. They're just different than
the objectives we have. We're trying to make money and be capitalists and flow that money down to workers and families in China, there's just a political element to their economy that doesn't exist in the US.
The other political element to all of us, of course, is while you were in this bilateral meeting with the President and Shijhiping, we had the Chinese readout come out where they need it clear that Taiwan is the biggest issue for them. At the same time, the White House read out didn't mention Taiwan at all.
How much is this.
Going to be the biggest hurdle between this relationship and setting up potentially some of the broader discussions like Board of Trade.
Well again, well, I don't expect the Taiwan issue to bleed into Board of Trade.
I just don't.
We've known for a long time that the Taiwan issue is of key importance to the Chinese. The Chinese know that for us, we're interested in US companies and US workers being successful and leveling the playing field. So it's normal for different countries to have different key objectives, and so it's normal for them to raise that. It's normal for us to talk about want to have access to their market.
But in twenty seventeen, you were actually here. I think you might be the only individual part of the President's cabinet. Now that was here in twenty seventeen. You were then the chiefest staff of Ambassador Leithheiser. Do you think she's warning was the sharpest you've heard on Taiwan?
So, I would say no, right, there's a difference between the way we talk and the bilateral meeting and the statements that go out from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is famously it takes a wolf warrior approach. I would say that the meetings here between President Trump and President She they were quite candid. You know, with the Chinese when you meet with them, they always have a script and typewritten points, and they're certainly with some of that.
But there was a lot of candid discussion, a lot of offscript discussion, which I think is really helpful where you're talking about the two leaders of the world's biggest economies.
Well, she opened the bilateral talking about the Ciddy's trap, basically saying America is the established, more existing power, we are the rising one, and the conflicts could emerge and brew from this sort of tension, and the President called the relationship fantastic. The two gave a toast to each other yesterday. It does feel like there is a warmness here. Do you feel like the relationship has changed from twenty.
Seventeen, Well, certainly it's developed more. I mean it's been nine years, and during those nine years, you know, obviously when President Trump wasn't in office, they didn't have communication, but they have met regularly during that time, maybe more so than some of the other leaders that President Trump has interacted with. So it's President Trump is the most powerful leader in the world, and President She is right up there with them. So I think it's natural for
them to have a relationship. It doesn't mean there are no problems. It doesn't mean that there are serious challenges we have to face. It doesn't mean there are things we're trying to deal with to protect our workers and protect our industries. But it does mean that we have to have a constructive relationship.
It just felt like the images in the rhetoric coming out of yesterday potentially what we're going to see today another bilateral meeting, didn't match the trade war that we were in a year ago. Are you happy with the direction of travel with this relationship?
Well, for me, as the trade representative, I'm looking at outcomes and one year in our trade deathsit with China has dropped by thirty three percent. That's incredible, went down by one hundred and thirty billion dollars last year. That's what we want to see. That means we're diversifying from China. We're making more stuff here. We're seeing the manufacturing indicators and manufacturing labor indicators increase in the United States.
That's what we're locking at.
It's less, you know, it's not this issue of China VERSUS America as much as it is. We're pro America and we want our domestic economy to do really well, and we have to kind of manage and control our economic relationship with China to make sure we can achieve our domestic economic goals.
And just finally, on Iran, this was the major talking point on the White House readout, Do you believe shijiping is going to help the United States and potentially reopening the strait up formos putting the pressure on the running regime and also at home telling their firms they need to abide by US sanctions.
So, first of all, it's really important for China to have the Straits of horror moves open, no tolling, no military control. That was clear from the meeting, so we welcome that. With respect to Chinese involvement with Iran, our view is that Chinese are being very pragmatic. They don't want to be on the wrong side of this. They want to see peace in that area. President Trump wants
to see peace in that area. So we have a lot of confidence that they will do what they can to limit any kind of material support for Iran.
Am bestor Grea, thank you so much for your time today.