U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested China initiated upcoming senior-level trade talks between the two countries and said he was not willing to cut U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods to get Beijing to the negotiating table.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will both travel to Geneva, Switzerlandare scheduled to meet later this week with Chinese representatives on trade and economic matters,

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will lead the U.S. negotiations on trade with China, an administration official said Wednesday. The confirmation, while not unexpected, signals the importance the administration is placing on the negotiations as President Donald Trump’s trade war with China begins wreaking havoc on U.

His executive order targeted the elimination of what is called gain-of-function, which studies how viruses become more powerful. The United States funded that sort of research at the Wuhan lab, in the city where the initial outbreak was reported. But a competing theory is that a person somehow came into contact with an infected animal.

US President Donald Trump on Monday ordered new limitations on a form of biological research his administration says caused the Covid-19 pandemic through a lab leak in China. "There's no laboratory that's immune from leaks -- and this is going to prevent inadvertent leaks from happening in the future and endangering humanity,

The former President's executive order will immediately halt "any present and all future" US funding for gain-of-function research in countries like China and Iran that lack proper safety oversight