Bessent says 19 finance ministers agreed 'cheap exports' are unsustainable, but China dissented

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that 19 of the members of the G20 agreed to address streams of “cheap exports” that cause global economic imbalances, but China dissented.

Bessent said that getting even 19 countries to agree to take on the problem was “incredible” and shows “the sheer the enormity of the problem.” Bessent spoke after a two-day meeting of the 20 countries in Asheville, N.C.

Bessent said earlier that he's urging 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.

China is a leading source of the “cheap exports” Bessent criticized and the 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 a closing press conference Tuesday, Bessent also previewed the upcoming meeting between President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping.

He told reporters that he had warned other nations at the beginning of President Donald 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 told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 finance minister meetings. “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.”

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 during his second term in office were unconstitutional. The Trump administration has been overhauling its approach, and is eyeing an additional 7.5% tariff on Chinese imports after investigating alleged Chinese excess industrial capacity and forced-labor regulations.

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.

He also said Trump and Xi would discuss AI policy when they meet later this month. It “behooves all of us to put up guardrails ... to prevent the non-state actors” building their own models.

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, has continued to agitate attendees of the conference hosted by the U.S. 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 finance meeting “created a lot of discomfort around the table, not only from Canada, but from colleagues 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.

European commissioner for the Economy, Valdis Dombrovskis, said during a press conference with reporters 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, but ... if both fighters go in a corner, then there will never be a resolution to this horrible conflict," he said.