President Donald Trump’s top trade envoy said Sunday that the U.S. president exacted a commitment from the Chinese to not “provide material support to Iran,” but that the United States did not seek China’s direct help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“When the president went in, he did not go in asking them to take action in the Straits of Hormuz. He was very focused on making sure that they didn’t provide material support to Iran. That’s a commitment he obtained and confirmed,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on ABC News’ “This Week.”
Greer said China has “a clear interest” in reopening the strait — “I was in these meetings, and that’s what, that’s what the Chinese said,” he said — but without getting involved directly, it’s unclear whether China’s position will do anything to pressure Iran.
“The president isn’t seeking to have joint military operations with the Chinese. I don’t think the American presidents have ever done that,” Greer said. “But obviously we want to make sure that they’re not getting in the way of anything we’re doing to try to clarify that situation.”
The president was back at the White House on Friday night after completing the two-day summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While there were few tangible deliverables achieved on the trip, Trump’s comments regarding a yet-to-be-approved Taiwan arms sale prompted some blowback.
Trump told reporters he spoke to Xi about the issue “in great detail.” In an interview with Fox News, he said of the potential arms sale: “We’re going to see what happens … I may do it. I may not do it.”
On “This Week,” Greer stressed that U.S. policy toward Taiwan hasn’t changed.
“The most important thing that needs to happen is we need to have no change in the status quo in the Taiwan Straits, and the president was really clear about this: There’s no change in American policy on Taiwan,” Greer said. “We expect that situation to be stable, and if President Xi is going to change that, then, obviously, that’s something that would be taken into account. The president is very focused on making sure that nothing happens there.”
On the arms sale, which Congress has pre-approved, Greer said it will be up to Trump: “The president will keep his own counsel on the, on the arms sales, and, and when and if that happens.”
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While the U.S. and China were engaged in a trade war for much of last year, Trump told reporters on the flight back to the U.S. that the issue of tariffs didn’t come up in his conversations with Xi.
However, Greer said on “This Week” that trade negotiations did indeed take place — just not at the leader level.
“Before the leaders meet people, like me and [Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent and our staff, we meet with our counterparts with the — on the Chinese side, and we work out among ourselves a lot of issues, so that the presidents don’t have to address it, and that’s why they didn’t address tariffs,” he said.
The trade envoy added that the administration is looking at establishing a “Board of Trade” with China to negotiate trading terms for certain goods.
“We’re gonna have conversations with the Chinese about stuff we should be selling them — ag and Boeing and medical devices — and the kinds of things we want to be getting from them, whether it’s consumer goods or low tech or other inputs that we don’t have here, and we’ll talk about the tariff treatment for those things.”
Asked to respond to critics who say the president didn’t accomplish much on the trip, Greer said a fact sheet is forthcoming, but highlighted several things he said were agreed upon. He said China agreed to again allow U.S. exports from several meat exporting facilities, to review certain biotechnology trades and to buy 200 Boeing planes.
“So there are a variety of very concrete things that are already happening, already going into a place, and most importantly, as the president has said, we have strategic stability with China,” he said.
