US trade with China probably needs to be smaller, USTR's Greer says

WASHINGTON: U.S. trade with China needs to be balanced and probably needs to be smaller, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Thursday, adding that he viewed a 25% drop in goods trade with China as heading in the "right direction."

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"The landing zone with China is our trade with them needs to be more balanced. It needs to probably be smaller so we're not so dependent on each other, and it needs to be in areas of non-sensitive goods," he told the American Growth Summit, a policy conference in Washington.

Greer said U.S. President Donald Trump's policies were helping to achieve more balanced trade with China and the situation was better overall than at the start of Trump's second term in January.

"I don't think anyone wants to have a full-on economic conflict with China, and we're not having that," he said.

He said the United States had many levers in its relationship with China, ranging from software to semiconductors, and that many allies were interested in taking coordinated action.

"But the decision right now is we want to have stability in this relationship," he said, adding that the United States also needed to boost its industrial production of strategic goods, including critical minerals.

Ties with China were now stable, but Washington was monitoring the situation on a daily basis, he said.

Greer's comments came a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China was poised to complete its commitments under a U.S.-China trade agreement, including the purchase of 12 million metric tons of soybeans, something he said would be completed by the end of February 2026.