WASHINGTON, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said President Donald Trump has obtained a commitment from China that it will not provide “material support to Iran.”
Greer explained in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that the United States has not asked China for direct assistance in reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
“When the president went in, he didn’t ask them to take action in the Strait of Hormuz. He was very focused on making sure they didn’t provide material support to Iran. That was a commitment that he obtained and confirmed,” Greer said on ABC News’ “This Week.”
Greer noted that China has a “clear interest” in reopening the strait but does not want to be directly involved.
“The president is not seeking joint military action with China. I don’t think the president of the United States has ever done that,” Greer said.
“But obviously we want to make sure they don’t get in the way of anything we do to clarify the situation,” he said.
Although the United States and China have been engaged in a trade war for much of last year, Trump told reporters on his flight back to the United States that tariffs did not come up in his conversations with Xi.
However, Greer said trade talks did take place, just not at the leadership level.
“Before leaders meet with people like me and [Treasury] secretary [Scott] Bessant and our staff, we met with our Chinese counterparts and we worked out a lot of the issues between us so that the presidents didn’t have to address it, which is why they didn’t address the tariffs,” he said.
Greer also mentioned that the United States is considering establishing a “trade committee” with China to negotiate trade terms for specific goods.
Asked to respond to critics who said the president’s trip didn’t accomplish much, Greer said a fact sheet was coming but highlighted several things he said there was agreement on.
He said China agreed to resume exports to the United States from several meat export facilities, review certain biotechnology trade and purchase 200 Boeing aircraft, although China has not confirmed the details of any agreement.
“So a variety of very specific things have happened, have gone somewhere, and most importantly, as the president said, we have strategic stability with China,” he said.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
