Greer says the US is ‘not expecting a large-scale conflict’ and that the two countries have stable relations.
Published on 7 April 2026
US Trade Representative Jameson Greer says the United States’ economic and trade relationship with China is stable and US President Donald Trump will aim to keep it that way when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping next month.
“We don’t want a large-scale confrontation with China or anything like that,” Greer said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute think tank.
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Greer said the world’s two largest economies have come to a stable position, with the US able to access Chinese rare earth minerals and maintain substantial tariffs on Chinese goods.
“When we think about what to expect from the presidential meeting, … we want to maintain that stability. We want to make sure that we can continue to get rare earths from the Chinese.”
Greer, US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met in Paris in March to discuss issues related to rare earths, including minerals that pass through third countries before reaching the US.
America’s access to rare earths
Although the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing was postponed from March to mid-May because of the US-Israel war over Iran, Greer said ministerial and staff-level consultations on rare earths are continuing.
Greer said of the rare earth issue, “It would be better not to bring it up at the leaders’ meeting.” “It would be nice if we could resolve this at the ministerial level and the staff level, and hopefully, we are in a position to do that. But, of course, the President, as he has in the past, will continue to advocate for U.S. access to rare earths.”
Greer said the U.S. is working on multilateral agreements to boost alternative supplies of critical minerals, but a price level mechanism is needed to protect production from potential future predatory price cuts by China.
The U.S. and China are working on creating a board of trade mechanism for Trump and Xi to consider, Greer said, which would determine how much trade the two countries can sustainably trade with each other without crossing national security red lines.
Greer also said there have been discussions about creating a possible board of investment between the two countries, but that it would focus on individual investment-related issues, such as barriers to specific company investment in the US or China, and not broad policy.
Trump has said he is open to the idea of ​​Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD opening a plant in the US, but US lawmakers have expressed growing concern that allowing such investments by state-backed Chinese automakers would pose an existential threat to the market-driven economics of the US auto industry.
“I would say the nature of it is different from the Board of Trade, which is going to be very concrete about the exchange of commodities,” Greer said of the investment mechanism. “In terms of investment, I don’t think we’re at the point in our relations with the Chinese where we want to talk about investment programs in any way, OK? We really need to get that trade deficit under control.”
