American Treasury Secretary Bent's latest speech emphasized that China is already a developed country and expressed the hope of cooperating with China to achieve global trade balance.

On April 23rd in U.S. time, American Treasury Secretary Bent delivered a keynote speech at the Institute for International Finance. As the only possibly professional economic member in the Trump team, his statement is crucial for us to understand the tariff policies of the Trump administration.

In our view, there are three important viewpoints in this speech by the American Treasury Secretary Bent: trade deficit, Sino-US agreement, and energy investment. American Treasury Secretary Bent believed that the United States could not continue to maintain a huge trade deficit and expressed that there was "an opportunity to reach a major agreement" between the US and China. He also urged the World Bank to maintain technological neutrality and invest in natural gas and other fossil fuel power generation.

We will mainly talk about the relevant content of the Sino-US agreement.

American Treasury Secretary Bent mentioned a viewpoint that international trade needs a "sustainable model", but he believed that China's economy, which is highly dependent on exports, is an unsustainable model, which not only "harms" China itself but also poses risks to the entire world, so it needs to be changed.

American Treasury Secretary Bent also indirectly criticized China for hollowing out America's manufacturing base, disrupting America's critical supply chains, and even threatening America's national and economic security. Bent also believed that China, as the second largest economy in the world, continuing to be considered a "developing country" is absurd.

Under such alarmist rhetoric, American Treasury Secretary Bent believed that there could be a big deal between the US and China: the US side would reshape trade balance by strengthening manufacturing, while China would reduce its reliance on exports and focus more on the "domestic large circulation". The US and China can cooperate on this issue, and the US is willing to help China.

In addition to the contents involving China, American Treasury Secretary Bent also talked about the fiscal deficit pressure of the United States, the leadership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as nuclear power generation issues, etc., which are not discussed here.

Regarding the remarks of American Treasury Secretary Bent on China, our analysis believes that the essence and core of his remarks are to help the United States revitalize manufacturing and repair the current shortcoming of being overly reliant on the tertiary industry through "Sino-US rebalancing" in the economic and trade field. Only in this way can it provide more lasting momentum for the development of the US economy and potentially solve the fiscal deficit pressure fundamentally.

The other day, data disclosed by the U.S. Treasury Department showed that the federal budget deficit reached $1.307 trillion in the first half of the 2025 fiscal year (October 2024 to March 2025), which was the second highest同期deficit record in U.S. history, just after $1.706 trillion in the first half of the 2021 fiscal year. The interest expenditure on public debt of the U.S. federal government has reached $582 billion.

For China, we are indeed in a period of economic transformation, shifting from high dependence on exports to "two legs walking" with both exports and domestic demand. However, Americans need to be clear that each country's economic development model is different, and not all countries are suitable for the American economic model. Although American Treasury Secretary Bent said he was thinking for China, it is actually the same as over 20 years ago when China joined the World Trade Organization to change China.

We still say that we are willing to contact the United States on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, but neither the alarmist remarks of the American Treasury Secretary nor the tariff pressure of President Trump are the right ways to deal with China.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7496769862446940724/

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