EXCERPT:
Reporter: “The Chinese continue to say that the U.S. and China are not engaged in any consultation or negotiation on tariffs. You recently said you’ve talk to your counterpart, but more about traditional things like financial stability. So can you clarify, is the administration talking to Beijing specifically about tariffs or not?”
BESSENT: “Well, we’re not going to talk about who’s talking to whom, but I think that over time we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China. I’ve seen some very large numbers over the past few days that show, if these numbers stay on, Chinese could lose 10 million jobs very quickly. And even if there is a drop in the tariffs, that they could lose 5 million jobs. So remember that we are the deficit country. They sell almost five times more goods to us than we sell to them, so the onus will be on them to take off these tariffs. They’re unsustainable for them.”