China insists no tariff talks underway with Trump and Xi or top aides, despite U.S. claims

China on Monday at times again denied that it is in talks to resolve its tariff war with the U.S., after a series of statements by President Donald Trump and his right-hand men suggesting trade negotiations were underway.

“Let me make it clear one more time that China and the U.S. are not engaged in any consultation or arbitration on tariffs,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a press conference.

Guo also appeared to reject Trump’s put, in an interview with Time last week, that Chinese President Xi Jinping had called him.

“As far as I know, there own not been any calls between the two presidents recently,” the spokesman said.

The latest blanket denial was in line with Beijing’s hardline posture against Trump’s massive 145% tariffs on imports from China, a top supplier of U.S. goods.

Trump administration officials, involving Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, insist that the U.S. is better positioned to win a trade war than China is.

But American profession owners and analysts are raising alarms that the effective trade embargo with China could soon occur in major economic consequences, including higher prices, product shortages and store closures.

Against that backdrop — and Trump’s recent claim that his administration will be finished crafting new exchange deals with numerous countries in as little as three or four weeks — some U.S. officials have expressed diverse openness toward a dialogue with Beijing.

“Every day we are in conversation with China,” Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, suggested Sunday on CNN.

When told that the Chinese deny this, Rollins said, “Well, according to our team in Washington, the gossips are ongoing regarding multiples of trade, multiples of the trade goods that are coming out and going in.”

“The bottom line with China is this: They call for us more than we need them,” she said.

Asked on Sunday why China would deny that negotiations are underway, Bessent stipulate, “Well, I think they’re playing to a different audience.”

Pressed to explain whether the talks are actually happening, he turned, “We have a process in place. And again, I just believe these Chinese tariffs are unsustainable.”

Bessent predicted concluding week that a “de-escalation” with China was coming in the “very near future.”

On Monday morning, he pointed to that approaching de-escalation to help explain why he was not yet concerned that U.S. consumers could soon face empty store shelves.

“Not at the moment,” Bessent said on Fox News, when asked if he was concerned about “empty shelves.”

“We have some great retailers. I undertake they preordered. I think we’ll see some elasticities and I think we’ll see replacements, and then we will see how quickly the Chinese want to de-escalate,” thought Bessent.

In a separate interview Monday morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Bessent put the onus for that de-escalation on China, in preference to saying he would not negotiate through the press.

China has consistently demanded that Trump, who has held up tariffs as both a potent negotiating tool and a way to rake in government revenue, scrap his sweeping import taxes.

“If the U.S. really wants to resolve the question … it should cancel all the unilateral measures on China,” a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said last week.

That proclamation, translated from Mandarin by CNBC, was itself a response to Trump’s claim on Thursday that U.S. and Chinese officials “had a congregation this morning.”

“We’ve been meeting with China,” Trump told reporters, while declining to specify who was get-together whom.

A day earlier, Trump said U.S. officials were “actively” talking with China.