May 14 - U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he anticipated an announcement of large Chinese orders for Boeing aircraft to coincide with President Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing. The comment came during an interview taped earlier on Thursday for CNBC.
Bessent told CNBC that discussions between U.S. and Chinese officials would extend beyond aircraft sales to include other purchases such as energy and agricultural goods. He framed the push as part of a broader effort to expand U.S. exports to China.
On the subject of investment, Bessent said the two sides had considered creating a "Board of Trade" to oversee bilateral commerce and a separate "Board of Investment" to handle investment proposals in non-strategic, non-sensitive sectors. He emphasized that the proposed investment board would serve to preview Chinese plans so they could be screened to ensure they did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which he leads.
"What we want to do is make sure that these investments don’t get referred to CFIUS, so this would pregame those investments, just to make sure that they’re not of a strategic or sensitive area," Bessent said.
He also pushed back on a reported figure for Chinese investment linked to the visit. "I’m not sure where this $1 trillion investment number has come from," Bessent said, distancing the administration from that particular estimate.
Bessent gave a concrete example of the sort of goods the U.S. would not target for reshoring, noting that fireworks were not an item the United States would seek to bring back from China.
The Treasury secretary reiterated the administration’s broader trade objective as described by President Trump during his conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "We’re focused on getting it into balance," Bessent said. "That’s the goal here, and that can be done one of two ways - either the U.S. receives fewer imports from China, or we sell more to China, and we’re trying to balance that out."
Observers will be watching the visit for confirmation of the Boeing orders and for any formal steps toward the trade and investment governance mechanisms Bessent described. The comments align with a strategy to increase U.S. exports while channeling certain foreign investments into non-sensitive areas that avoid CFIUS referral.