As trade tensions flared between the world’s largest economies, communication between the United States and China has been so shaky that the two superpowers cannot even agree on whether they are talking at all.
At a White House economic briefing this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demurred multiple times when pressed about President Trump’s recent claim that President Xi Jinping of China had called him. Although top economic officials might usually be aware of such high-level talks, Mr. Bessent insisted that he was not logging the president’s calls.