China Warns US Over 'Trade Restrictions' as Bessent, Greer Hold Video Call With Beijing Ahead of Xi-Trump Summit

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer got on a video call Thursday with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. The topic: keeping the US-China trade truce from falling apart before President Trump and President Xi Jinping are set to meet in person.

According to Xinhua's official readout, the two sides had "candid, in-depth and constructive" exchanges about implementing the "important consensus" Trump and Xi reached at their meeting in Beijing. Both governments are trying to keep a fragile deal from blowing up before the cameras are even set up for a summit.

China didn't hold back on its complaints. Xinhua reported that "the Chinese side expressed serious concern over the recent economic and trade restrictions imposed by the United States on China." The report doesn't specify which restrictions, but the timing lines up with ongoing US export controls tied to national security concerns over Chinese tech and military applications.

Beijing has raised this grievance publicly and repeatedly. Whether the restrictions are justified is a separate question. China has spent years building military capacity with dual-use technology bought or stolen from Western companies. Washington has plenty of reason to keep tightening controls on chips and other strategic goods regardless of how Beijing feels about it.

Bessent didn't sound like he was in an apologetic mood. Writing on social media after the call, he said he expects Beijing to "fully meet its commitments on rare earths and US agricultural products," according to the South China Morning Post. Bessent was putting the ball back in China's court. The rare earth and soybean promises aren't new asks. They're commitments China already made and, in Washington's view, hasn't fully delivered.

Bessent also mentioned discussing the "Trade and Investment Boards" as a mechanism to get "concrete progress toward a more balanced, fair, and constructive US-China economic relationship," per his own comments cited by SCMP. Both sides are trying to build some kind of structure to manage disputes rather than let them blow up into another tariff war.

Xi Jinping is reportedly planning a visit to the United States in September, and this video call is part of the run-up to that meeting, according to Newsweek's Crypto Briefing coverage of the topic. Crypto Briefing's write-up frames the call almost entirely through the lens of predicting whether the Xi visit will actually happen, treating it as a forecasting exercise for prediction markets rather than a hard news event. That's a thinner take than what Xinhua and SCMP offered, and it skips the substance of what was actually said on the call, including China's specific complaint about US restrictions and Bessent's pointed comment about unmet Chinese commitments.

Nobody has confirmed a firm date or formal itinerary for Xi's visit. No White House statement or Chinese Foreign Ministry announcement has locked in specifics beyond the general expectation of a September summit. Anyone treating this as a done deal is getting ahead of the facts.

Neither Xinhua nor SCMP's report names which US restrictions China is objecting to. If Beijing is complaining about chip export controls tied to military end-use concerns, that's a very different conversation than if they're upset about tariffs on unrelated consumer goods.

It's also unclear how close China actually is to meeting the rare earth and agricultural purchase commitments Bessent referenced. Bessent's comment implies they're behind. China hasn't publicly disputed that characterization in these reports, but it also hasn't confirmed a timeline for catching up.

The next concrete marker to watch is whether the White House or Beijing issues a formal announcement locking in dates for the Xi-Trump summit. Until that happens, September remains a target, not a certainty. Also worth watching: whether the newly mentioned Trade and Investment Boards produce any actual agreements, or whether they turn into another layer of diplomatic scaffolding that produces meetings but not results.