ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that 19 of the members of the G20 had agreed to address streams of “cheap exports” that cause global economic imbalances, but said China had dissented.
Bessent made his comments at the end of a two-day meeting with finance ministers and central bankers where he tried to focus on growth, telling reporters he had urged some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration’s playbook of using tariffs and other measures to crack down on trade imbalances.
“We believe that non-market-based economies pushing out a never-ending stream of cheap exports is not sustainable,” Bessent told reporters, describing the sentiment that all but one G20 member had agreed to.
“It is clear that the country with the world’s largest and unsustainable current account surplus, the People’s Republic of China, was the dissenter,” Bessent said.
The Trump administration, echoing many economists, has blamed China for trade imbalances that have left it with a large trade surplus while the U.S. has a sizable deficit. At the closing press conference Tuesday, Bessent also previewed the coming meeting between President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping.
He told reporters he had warned other nations at the beginning of Trump ’s second term that the new U.S. “tariff wall” would mean that Chinese goods would flood their markets.
“And unfortunately, I was right,” Bessent said. “The rest of the world probably needs to take a hard look at what they should be doing to protect their citizens’ jobs, their manufacturing base, so that everything they do doesn’t get offshored.”
Bessent says AI companies must explain themselves better
He also said Trump and Xi would discuss artificial intelligence policy when they meet later this month, saying more guardrails were needed to prevent “non-state actors” from building their own models.
The treasury secretary added that he has made the point directly to industry leaders that AI companies, “whether it is the builders of the data centers, whether it is the labs themselves, have done a horrendous job, horrendous job of explaining themselves to the American people.”
“They’re going to have to take some of the blame, and they are going to have to convince the American people that all the benefits will not accrue to a small group.”
After the press conference, Trump posted on his social media site that “very productive and positive conversations were had” during the G20 meetings. He added that other countries “should follow our lead.”
The Trump administration’s tariff policies have been criticized by economists and politicians for raising costs for U.S. consumers and, in many cases, for punishing allies. The Tax Foundation, an independent think tank, found that the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration throughout 2025 raised the overall retail price of imported consumer goods by roughly 7% relative to pre-tariff trends.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court in February decided that the sweeping global tariffs that Trump imposed under an emergency powers law were unconstitutional. The Trump administration has been overhauling its approach, and is eyeing an additional 7.5% tariff on Chinese imports after investigating alleged excess industrial capacity and forced-labor regulations.
US and China found some common ground on Iran
Bessent met with his counterparts from China at the summit and said there was some common ground on Iran, specifically that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” and that oil and other goods should flow freely through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has restricted.
Bessent has said China’s trade surplus, which reached a record-high $1.2 trillion in 2025, is a barrier to global economic growth — as well as what he calls excessive regulation.
Global debt has reached a record high of $353 trillion, with the U.S. debt reaching a record $40 trillion in August. Markets have been concerned about a sell-off in U.S. government bonds, but Bessent told reporters, “I don’t think we’re in any kind of dire situation” on bond markets.
Meanwhile, the presence of Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov continued to agitate attendees of the conference. Siluanov met with Bessent on Monday on the sidelines of the meeting, but was not included in the traditional “family photo” of ministers.
Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Russia’s attendance at the G20 meeting “created a lot of discomfort around the table.”
“We have made sure our discomfort is being heard by colleagues with respect to who is in attendance at the meeting,” Champagne said.
The European Commissioner for the Economy, Valdis Dombrovskis, said during a press conference Tuesday that it is not the time to “normalize” relations with Russia.
Bessent defended the inclusion of Siluanov, arguing that “if the sides don’t talk, if we are not engaged, then how can it be solved?”
“I know that some Europeans had a sour taste” about the invitation, Bessent said. “If both fighters go in a corner, then there will never be a resolution to this horrible conflict.”
Rugaber reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Rob Gillies in Toronto and Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.
