Bessent Calls China an Unreliable Partner for Its Hoarding Oil Amid Iran War

The Treasury secretary also pointed to how China hoarded health care products during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testifies before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 5, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China had been an “unreliable global partner” during the war in Iran, citing the communist regime’s hoarding of oil supplies and limits on certain exports.

Speaking to reporters on April 14, Bessent said he had raised the issue with Chinese officials. He declined to comment on whether it might derail U.S. President Donald Trump’s scheduled trip to China in mid-May, and he said that Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping had a good working relationship.

“I think the message for the visit is stability. We’ve had great stability in the relationship since last summer; that emanates from the top down,” Bessent said. “I think that communication is the key.”

The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil rose above $100 in March and early April. It has now dipped below $100 and hovered at around $95.

“China has been an unreliable global partner three times in the past five years; once during COVID, when they hoarded health care products, second on rare earth,” Bessent said, referring to Beijing’s threats in 2025 to impose export controls on rare-earth elements, which are critical materials used in high-tech goods such as semiconductors.

Bessent said China had been stockpiling oil rather than helping ease global shortages triggered by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of global liquefied natural gas and oil trade passes annually.

In March, Washington-based think tank the Atlantic Council reported that China held approximately 1.2 billion barrels of onshore crude stockpiles as of January, citing Kpler data.

“They continued buying, and they’ve been hoarding, and they have cut off exports of many products,” Bessent said.

At a regular briefing on April 15, Guo Jiakun, spokesperson for the Chinese regime’s foreign ministry, said Beijing and Washington remain in communication regarding Trump’s China trip, in response to a question about Bessent’s remarks, according to Chinese state media.

Bessent’s remarks on China’s stockpiling of health care products mirror concerns previously raised by other U.S. officials.

In April 2020, then-White House trade adviser Peter Navarro criticized Beijing for hoarding personal protective equipment and profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in an intelligence report dated May 1, 2020, said China “stockpiled medical supplies by both increasing imports and decreasing exports” in early January 2020, and tried to cover up actions by “denying there were export restrictions and obfuscating and delaying provision of its trade data.”

“We have moderate confidence in this assessment because trade data shows that China likely stockpiled medical supplies for domestic use before its official notification to the World Health Organization (WHO) that COVID-19 was contagious,” the report reads.

Then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a COVID-19-related lawsuit against the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese city of Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and several other Chinese entities in April 2020. The lawsuit accused China of running an “appalling campaign of deceit, concealment, misfeasance, and inaction” during the initial outbreak, while also alleging that it hoarded personal protective equipment and restricted its exports.

In March 2025, a Missouri judge found the Chinese Communist Party liable for $24 billion for hoarding COVID-19 protective equipment.

The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and International Energy Agency on ​April 13 urged countries to refrain from hoarding energy supplies and enforcing export restrictions that could worsen what they described as the biggest shock in the history of the global energy market. The three organizations did not name specific countries.

On April 13, the U.S. Navy began a blockade of ships leaving Iran’s ports, and Tehran threatened to respond by targeting Persian Gulf neighbors’ ports, following talks between a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and top Iranian officials in Pakistan that ended without a deal.

Earlier on April 14, Bessent told reporters that the blockade would prevent any Chinese tankers or other vessels from transiting the strait.

“So they’re not going to be able to get their oil. They can get oil. Not Iranian oil,” Bessent said, noting that China accounts for more than 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, which made up approximately 8 percent of its oil imports annually.

Reuters contributed to this report.