Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will hold talks with Chinese officials today in Stockholm, Sweden.
The two sides have about two weeks until an Aug. 12 deadline, when higher tariff rates would kick in.
Greer said on CNBC ahead of the meeting that while he believed that the U.S. was “in an incredible position,” he did not “expect some kind of enormous breakthrough today.”
“What I expect is continued monitoring and checking in on the implementation of our agreement thus far,” he added.
Greer also said that the administration did not “feel a necessary urgency for deals.”
“We don’t feel under pressure have more deals, I’ll put it that way,” he added.
In an MSNBC interview ahead of the meeting, Greer also said he could not yet say whether there might be room to extend the deadline, but noted that “the conversations are constructive, and they’re going in the right direction.”
Greer said the U.S. comes into the meetings “with a strong hand” after reaching trade agreements with the European Union and Japan.
“We’ve had a lot of tensions over the years, we’ve had tensions now, but the fact that we are regularly meeting with them to address these issues, I think that gives us a good footing for these negotiations,” Greer said of the rounds of talks with China.
In May, the countries came to an agreement to pause steep tariff rates for 90 days after the two sides met in Geneva.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro previously said the administration’s goal would to reach “90 deals in 90 days,” but the administration has announced only a handful of agreements so far.
Trump has referred to letters his administration will be sending to other nations setting tariff rates as effectively being trade agreements.
