The Trump administration is more concerned with the quality of trade agreements rather than their timing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday ahead of an Aug. 1 deadline for securing a trade deal or facing steep tariffs.
“We’re not going to rush for the sake of doing deals,” Bessent told CNBC in an interview.
Asked whether the deadline could be extended for countries engaged in productive talks with Washington, Bessent said U.S. President Donald Trump would decide.
“We’ll see what the president wants to do. But again, if we somehow boomerang back to the August 1 tariff, I would think that a higher tariff level will put more pressure on those countries to come with better agreements,” he said.
On China, Bessent said there would be “talks in the very near future.”
“I think trade is in a good place and, I think, now we can start talking about other things. The Chinese unfortunately… are very large purchasers of sanctioned Iranian oil, sanctioned Russian oil,” he said.
“We could also discuss the elephant in the room, which is this great rebalancing that the Chinese need to do.”
Bessent told CNBC he would encourage Europe to follow the United States if it implements secondary tariffs on Russia.
On Japan, Bessent said the administration was less concerned with its domestic politics than with getting the best deal for Americans.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Andrea Shalal Editing by Bernadette Baum)