WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday said he expected an announcement about large Chinese orders for Boeing aircraft during President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing, saying Washington wanted to expand exports to China.
Bessent told CNBC in an interview taped earlier on Thursday that the two sides would discuss other purchases, including of energy and agricultural goods, as well as non-strategic, non-sensitive areas in which China could invest in the United
States.
Fireworks, for instance, were goods that the U.S. would not seek to reshore, Bessent told CNBC's "Squawk Box" program after meetings with Chinese counterparts.
Bessent said U.S. and Chinese officials discussed forming a "Board of Trade" to govern bilateral trade between the world's two largest economies, and a separate "Board of Investment" that would be responsible for investment in those non-sensitive areas.
He pushed back against a suggestion that Trump was seeking some $1 trillion in investment by China, saying, "I'm not sure where this $1 trillion investment number has come from."
He said the new investment board would preview any Chinese plans to ensure they did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which he chairs.
"What we want to do is make sure that these investments don't get referred to CFIUS, so this would pregame those investments, just to make sure that they're not of a strategic or sensitive area," Bessent said.
Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday that he wanted to open up China and rebalance the trade relationship.
"We're focused on getting it into balance," Bessent said. "That's the goal here, and that can be done one of two ways - either the U.S. receives fewer imports from China, or we sell more to China, and we're trying to balance that out."
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, David Lawder, Susan Heavey; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Kirsten Donovan)
