The U.S. and China opened economic and trade negotiations in Paris on Sunday, with the talks viewed as groundwork for President Donald Trump’s state visit to Beijing to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping in about two weeks. The delegations began meeting in the French capital in the morning, an event reported by China’s official news agency Xinhua.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent led the U.S. side, and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng led the Chinese delegation. The U.S. Treasury Department said Bessent would meet He on Sunday and Monday, and China’s commerce ministry said the two sides were set to discuss “trade and economic issues of mutual concern.”
The White House said Trump would travel to China from March 31 to April 2, while Beijing had not officially confirmed the visit by Sunday. Trump’s trip would mark the first time a U.S. president has visited China since he went in his first term in 2017.
The Paris talks come about five months after Trump and Xi met in Busan, South Korea, where the two leaders agreed to a one-year truce in their trade war. That prior pause followed a period in which tit-for-tat tariffs had surged to triple digits before the two sides scaled back.
Trade remains a live point of tension entering the Paris meetings. China’s commerce ministry criticized the Trump administration’s new trade investigation covering 16 trading partners, including China, saying the inquiry could pave the way for new tariffs. The investigation was described as coming after a Supreme Court ruling struck down sweeping global tariffs imposed last year, according to the AP report.
The U.S. also launched a separate investigation into imports of goods made with forced labor from countries including China. China said Monday that it had already made representations over concerns about the new investigation to the U.S., calling it “a mistake on top of a mistake, that severely harms the global supply chain’s safety and stability,” in a statement from its Ministry of Commerce.
Iran was also flagged as a possible agenda item. Trump said Saturday that he hoped China, France, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and others would send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz “open and safe,” linking the request to rising global anxiety over oil prices and supplies.
Ahead of Sunday’s talks, Gary Ng, a senior economist at French bank Natixis and a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, said the Paris meeting was likely the most important bilateral engagement before the Trump-Xi summit. He said the core issue was “whether China and the U.S. can agree on what is agreed and manage disagreement,” adding that Iran was “a new factor,” while Beijing was also “more concerned about the flip-flopping of U.S. policies.”
Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, previously said it would be a “big year” for China-U.S. relations, while he did not confirm the state visit. Wang said that “the agenda of high-level exchange is already on the table,” as the two countries’ senior trade negotiators continued meetings that began last year in Geneva, London, Stockholm, Madrid and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.