The world’s two largest economies are trying to resolve trade issues as US President Donald Trump is expected to visit China this month.
Posted on March 15, 2026
Senior officials from the United States and China have launched a new round of talks ahead of a summit between their presidents, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, scheduled in Beijing later this month.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at the Paris headquarters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Sunday to discuss trade issues between the world’s two largest economies.
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Discussions are expected to focus on changing U.S. tariffs, the flow of magnets and rare earth minerals produced in China to U.S. buyers, U.S. high-tech export controls and Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products.
China and the United States fought a bitter trade war for much of 2025, with reciprocal tariffs reaching triple digits at one point and export restrictions that threatened to derail global supply chains for critical minerals.
Tensions cooled after Trump met Xi in Busan, South Korea, in October, but new U.S. investigations into China’s industrial overcapacity and forced labor announced Wednesday threaten further instability.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Friday that officials in Paris would “carry out consultations on economic and trade issues of mutual interest,” without elaborating on the content of the talks.
Bessent, who would be accompanied by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, said in a statement Thursday that “economic dialogue” between the countries “is moving forward.”
The two-day Paris meeting is seen as setting the stage for Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi. Washington has said Trump will visit China from March 31 to April 2, although Beijing has yet to confirm those dates in line with its usual practice.
Trump and Xi could meet three times this year, including an APEC summit hosted by China in November and a G20 summit hosted by the United States in December, which could lead to more tangible progress.
Concerns about the Iran war
The diplomatic engagements between the United States and China come at a tumultuous time for the global economy, as energy markets are hit by the impact of the US-Israel war with Iran.
Beijing is a close partner of Tehran and has condemned the assassination of Iran’s former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but has also criticized Iranian attacks on Gulf states.
The US-Israel war against Iran will likely come up in the Paris talks, especially in reference to rising oil prices and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which China gets 45 percent of its oil.
Bessent on Thursday night announced a 30-day sanctions waiver to allow the sale of Russian oil stranded at sea on tankers, a move to boost supplies.
On Saturday, Trump urged other nations to help protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, after Washington bombed military targets in Iran’s Kharg Island oil loading hub and Iran threatened to retaliate.
“Significant” progress in economic cooperation between China and the United States could restore confidence in an increasingly fragile global economy, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said in a commentary on Sunday.
US-China trade analysts say that with little time to prepare and Washington’s attention focused on the US-Israel war against Iran, the prospects for a significant trade breakthrough at the Paris talks are limited.
“I think both sides have the minimum goal of holding a meeting, which kind of keeps things together and prevents a breakup and a new escalation of tensions,” Scott Kennedy, an expert on China economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, told Reuters news agency.
