G20 addresses ‘cheap exports’
US urges members to use tariffs to crack down on trade
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that 19 of the members of the G20 agreed to address streams of "cheap exports" that cause global economic imbalances, but China dissented.
Bessent said that getting even 19 countries to agree to take on the problem was "incredible" and shows "the sheer the enormity of the problem." Bessent spoke after a two-day meeting of the 20 countries in Asheville, N.C.
Bessent said earlier that he's urging some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration's playbook of using tariffs and other measures to crack down on trade imbalances.
China is a leading source of the "cheap exports" Bessent criticized and the administration, echoing many economists, has blamed China for trade imbalances that have left it with a large trade surplus while the U.S. has a sizable deficit.
The Trump administration's tariff policies have been criticized by economists and politicians for raising costs for U.S. consumers and, in many cases, for punishing allies. The Tax Foundation, an independent think tank, found that the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration throughout 2025 raised the overall retail price of imported consumer goods by roughly 7% relative to pre-tariff trends.