Treasury Secretary Bessent says it's up to China to de-escalate trade tensions

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday put the responsibility for reaching a trade agreement on China.

"I believe that it's up to China to de-escalate, because they sell five times more to us than we sell to them, and so these 120%, 145% tariffs are unsustainable," Bessent said during an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

The comments come with markets on edge over the direction of tariffs following President Donald Trump's April 2 announcement of broad-based global duties. A week later, Trump said he would keep in place 10% across-the-board tariffs but table for 90 days more aggressive levies against individual trading partners.

Since then, the U.S. has made progress in negotiations, Bessent said, singling out India for a potential deal in coming days among 15 to 18 "important trading relationships" that are subject of negotiations.

"We've had many countries come forward and present some very good proposals, and we're evaluating those," he said.

"I would guess that India would be one of the first trade deals we would sign. So watch this space," Bessent added.

In addition to his assessment of the situation with China and other Asian countries, Bessent charged that European nations are likely "in a panic" over the strength of the euro against the U.S. dollar since the trade tensions began. The euro has risen nearly 10% this year against the greenback after the currencies had reached near parity in early January.

"You're going to see the [European Central Bank] start cutting rates to try to get the Euro back down," Bessent said. "Europeans don't want a strong euro. We have a strong-dollar policy."

Administration officials have sent mixed signals recently regarding the state of negotiations.

Trump last week said he was talking with Chinese officials about trade as they visited Washington. However, other reports indicated that negotiations were not taking place as the officials instead were in town for the World Bank and International Monetary Foundation meetings.

Bessent insisted that the White House will not be conducting negotiations in the press.