US targets China’s global trade surplus at G20 meeting ahead of Xi-Trump summit

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday targeted China’s global trade surplus, raising concerns over “excessive imbalances,” weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive in Washington for a bilateral summit with US President Donald Trump.“We are confronting persistent global imbalances that undermine prosperity,” Bessent said in his opening address at the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in Asheville, North Carolina. The United States holds the G20 presidency in 2026, leading a forum of the world’s major advanced and emerging economies.Without naming China, Bessent said that the grouping’s finance ministers and central bank governors “have broadly concurred that it is in the interests of both surplus and deficit countries to address excessive imbalances”.