'Trump will pursue stability with Xi in May meeting'

WASHINGTON:

The US economic and trade relationship with China is stable and President Donald Trump will aim to keep it that way in a meeting next month with Chinese President Xi Jinping, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Tuesday.

"What we are not looking for is massive confrontation or anything like that" with China, Greer told an event hosted by the Hudson Institute think tank.

Greer said that the world's two largest economies have settled into a stable situation in which the United States is able to access Chinese rare earths and maintains substantial tariffs on Chinese goods. "When we think about what to expect for the president's meeting ... we're looking to maintain that stability. We're looking to ensure we can continue to get rare earths from the Chinese."

Greer, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng discussed issues involving rare earths in Paris in March, including minerals that go through third countries before they make it to the United States.

Although an initial Trump-Xi summit in Beijing was postponed due to the Iran war, Greer said that minister and staff-level consultations on rare earths have continued.

"It would be nice not to have it come up at the leaders' meeting," Greer said of the rare earths issue. "It'd be nice if we could resolve it at the ministers' level and the staff level, and hopefully we're in a position to do that."

Greer said that the United States is working on plurilateral agreements to boost alternative supplies of critical minerals, but these need price floor mechanisms to protect production from potential future predatory price cuts by China.