Ammon News - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday said there was no reason that the US and Chinese economies had to cleave apart, saying a deal could be done even as the two economic powerhouses trade tariff threats.

"There's a big deal to be done at some point" Bessent said when asked by Bloomberg TV about the possibility that the world's largest economies would decouple.

"There doesn't have to be" decoupling, he said, "but there could be."

Bessent stressed that a deal with China would be more difficult than with other nations because "China is both our biggest economic competitor and our biggest military rival."

The world's two largest economies have been locked in a fast-moving game of brinkmanship since US President Donald Trump launched a global tariff assault that particularly targeted Chinese imports.

Tit-for-tat exchanges have seen US levies imposed on China rise to 145 percent, with Beijing setting a retaliatory 125 percent band on US imports.

The US side has sent mixed messages about what it wants to achieve and whether tariffs that would rock the world economy can be avoided. AFP