Bessent says G20 countries should also use tariffs to protect their industries from cheap imports

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says he's urging some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration's playbook of using tariffs and other measures to crack down on trade imbalances.

Bessent told reporters that he had warned other nations at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term that the new U.S. “tariff wall” would mean that Chinese goods would flood their markets.

“And unfortunately, I was right,” Bessent told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 finance minister meetings. “The rest of the world probably needs to take a hard look at what they should be doing to protect their citizens’ jobs, their manufacturing base, so that everything they do doesn’t get offshored.”

The Trump administration's tariff policies have been criticized by economists and politicians for raising costs for U.S. consumers and, in many cases, for punishing allies. The Tax Foundation, an independent think tank, found that the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration throughout 2025 raised the overall retail price of imported consumer goods by roughly 7% relative to pre-tariff trends.

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court in February decided that the sweeping global tariffs that Trump imposed under an emergency powers law during his second term in office were unconstitutional. The Trump administration has been overhauling its approach, and is eyeing an additional 7.5% tariff on Chinese imports after investigating alleged Chinese excess industrial capacity and forced-labor regulations.

Bessent met with his counterparts from China at the summit, though he did not provide details of how those talks went.

“I often say in our trade discussions with China that we do not want to pull apart from them, but we have to de-risk,” Bessent said during a conversation on Tuesday with Fox Business commentator Larry Kudlow, who was a top economic adviser to Trump in his first term.

“We have more in common with the Chinese on Iran than we disagree on," Bessent said. "The Chinese agree Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The Chinese agree that there should be freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Bessent has said China's trade surplus, which reached a record-high $1.2 trillion in 2025, is a barrier to global economic growth — as well as what he calls excessive regulation.

Meanwhile, global debt has reached a record high of $353 trillion, with the U.S. debt reaching a record $40 trillion in August. Markets have been concerned about a sell-off in U.S. government bonds, but Bessent told reporters “I don't think we’re in any kind of dire situation” on bond markets.