The US is ‘not looking for a massive confrontation’, Greer says, adding that the two countries have a stable relationship.
Published On 7 Apr 2026
The United States economic and trade relationship with China is stable and US President Donald Trump will aim to keep it that way in a meeting next month with Chinese President Xi Jinping, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer says.
“What we are not looking for is massive confrontation or anything like that” with China, Greer said on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute think tank.
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Greer said the world’s two largest economies have settled into a stable situation in which the US is able to access Chinese rare earth minerals and maintain substantial tariffs on Chinese goods.
“When we think about what to expect for the president’s meeting, … we’re looking to maintain that stability. We’re looking to ensure we can continue to get rare earths from the Chinese.”
Greer, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng discussed issues involving rare earths in Paris in March, including minerals that go through third countries before they make it to the US.
US access to rare earths
Although the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing was postponed from March to mid-May due to the US-Israel war on Iran, Greer said minister and staff-level consultations on rare earths have continued.
“It would be nice not to have it come up at the leaders meeting,” Greer said of the rare earths issue. “It’d be nice if we could resolve it at the ministers level and the staff level, and hopefully, we’re in a position to do that. But, of course, the president, as he has in the past, he will continue to advocate for US access to rare earths.”
Greer said the US is working on plurilateral agreements to boost alternative supplies of critical minerals but these need price floor mechanisms to protect production from potential future predatory price cuts by China.
The US and China, Greer said, are working on forming a board of trade mechanism for Trump and Xi to consider, which would determine what the two countries could sustainably trade with each other without crossing national security red lines.
Greer also said there have been discussions about forming a possible board of investment between the two countries, but it would discuss discrete issues related to investment, such as roadblocks to specific company investments in the US or China, and not broad policy.
Trump has said he would be open to the idea of Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD starting a plant in the US, but US lawmakers have voiced increasing concern that allowing such investments from state-supported Chinese automakers would create an existential threat to the market-driven economics of the US auto industry.
“I would say it’s different in nature than the board of trade, which is going to be very concrete about exchange of goods,” Greer said of the investment mechanism. “With investment, I don’t think we’re at the point in our relationship with the Chinese where we want to talk about the investment programmes either way, right? We really need to get that trade deficit under control.”