ASHEVILLE, Aug. 31, 2026: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is seeking a broader G20 response to China’s export surplus, but the United States has yet to demonstrate wider support for its proposed remedy as finance ministers and central bank governors begin a two-day meeting in Asheville.
Bessent said he would urge G20 members to re-examine their trade terms with China to reduce global imbalances and encourage Beijing to shift its economy away from exports toward domestic consumption. He also said Washington is seeking a G20 joint statement on trade and current-account imbalances.
Washington Targets China’s Export Model
Bessent described China’s trade surplus as about $1.2 trillion and said the scale was unsustainable, arguing that China needed to strengthen domestic demand rather than rely on exports to support its economy. He said other economies should examine their trade relations with China and consider additional barriers to encourage such a shift.
Just as @POTUS is reviving American economic growth and making it the centerpiece of this Administration’s agenda, we are taking the same approach and prioritizing growth as the host of this year’s G20 Finance Track. We look forward to convening policymakers and private sector… pic.twitter.com/AWzgQIIcev
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) August 30, 2026
The U.S. Treasury has made reducing excessive global imbalances one of the priorities of its 2026 G20 Finance Track, alongside issues including economic growth, debt transparency and financial regulation. Treasury has scheduled the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting for Aug. 31-Sept. 1 in Asheville, while the separate G20 leaders’ summit is scheduled for December.
US-China Deficit Has Fallen
U.S. Census Bureau data show that the U.S. goods trade deficit with China fell by about one-third in the first six months of 2026 from the same period of 2025, to $73.9 billion, according to data cited in reporting on Bessent’s proposal. The figure refers to goods trade, not the combined goods-and-services balance.
Bessent said the improvement in the U.S. bilateral position does not resolve the wider imbalance because Chinese exports have increasingly been directed toward other markets, particularly Europe and Latin America, after the United States reduced imports from China. He argued that other economies now face the consequences of China's export strength and should reconsider their own trade terms with Beijing.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics offers a different measure of the effect of U.S. tariffs. Research by Mary E. Lovely and Christine Y. Wan found that although China's share of total U.S. imports fell from about 18% in 2017 to roughly 11% in 2024, China's share of the value added embodied in U.S. imports fell much less, from 17.7% to 15.4%. PIIE concluded that Chinese content had increasingly reached the U.S. through third countries, indicating that tariffs had changed trade routes more than they had reduced underlying dependence on Chinese suppliers.
US tariffs on China have changed the routes Chinese content reaches the US far more than they have reduced US dependence on China. Examining value-added trade flows through 2024 shows US reliance on Chinese producers has fallen much less than bilateral trade data suggest. Chinese… pic.twitter.com/eHzcX8qkvm
— Peterson Institute (@PIIE) August 8, 2026
Europe Has Its Own Approach
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are separately working on a joint approach to the European Union's trade imbalance with China. Reuters reported that the two leaders' discussions include the renminbi and that China's goods trade surplus with the EU reached about $687 billion from January through July 2026.
Reuters' analysis of the Franco-German approach noted that European policymakers' concern over China's surplus does not necessarily translate into support for Washington's proposed use of broader trade barriers. The analysis argued that China's weak domestic demand is a deeper structural issue than the exchange rate alone.
Bessent, meanwhile, has rejected the idea that a new Plaza Accord-style currency arrangement would provide the main solution. He argued that focusing on the yuan would avoid what he sees as the deeper problems of Chinese industrial subsidies and weak domestic demand.
Beijing Rejects Washington’s Framing
China Daily, a state-run Chinese newspaper, criticised the U.S. initiative in a commentary published Aug. 31, describing Washington's effort as an attempt to use the G20 to advance unilateral demands against China. The commentary argued that the G20 should remain a forum for policy coordination rather than economic pressure against an individual member.
The Chinese government itself had not issued a clearly identifiable Aug. 31 Foreign Ministry or Commerce Ministry statement specifically responding to Bessent's proposal. Reuters reported that China's embassy in Washington could not immediately be reached for comment on the U.S. effort.
No Common G20 Position Yet
The U.S. Treasury's agenda establishes that global imbalances are a formal subject of the 2026 G20 Finance Track, but neither the Treasury's agenda nor the current meeting schedule establishes that G20 members have agreed on a common response to China's export surplus.
The available statements therefore show a U.S. proposal for stronger collective action, Chinese state-media opposition to the U.S. framing, and a separate European effort to address its own trade imbalance with China, but they do not yet establish a G20 consensus on Washington's preferred remedy.
A Test for US Economic Diplomacy
The International Monetary Fund has separately identified China and the United States as the main drivers of rising global current-account imbalances and has said that simultaneous policy action to address domestic imbalances would produce the most favourable outcome for the global economy.
The IMF's assessment gives the G20 debate a broader economic context: the issue is not simply China's exports, but the interaction between China's weak domestic demand, its large external surplus and imbalances in other major economies.
Bessent is therefore seeking to turn a U.S.-China trade dispute into a wider multilateral discussion over how the world's largest economies should respond to global imbalances. The absence so far of a demonstrated common position on the U.S. remedy leaves Washington's proposal unresolved at the Asheville meeting.
For the G20, the immediate question is whether members can agree not only that global trade imbalances require attention, but also on the appropriate instruments for addressing them. The U.S. proposal for stronger trade barriers has been placed on the table, but the available evidence does not yet show that it has secured collective backing.
With the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting still underway, the US stance on China's export surplus remains in limbo at the G20.
