Spain defends closer trade ties with China after US warns against 'cutting own throat'

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain will pursue closer trade ties with China in the interests of its citizens and of the EU, its agriculture minister Luis Planas said on Wednesday, rejecting a U.S. warning that moving closer to the Asian country would be "cutting your own throat".

"We have excellent trade relations with China which we intend to not only continue having, but expanding," Planas told reporters from Ho Chi Minh City, where he was accompanying Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on a trip to Vietnam and, on Friday, China.

Planas had been asked about earlier comments by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who criticised Spanish Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo's suggestion that Europe should more closely align with China.

"That would be cutting your own throat," Bessent told a banking event in Washington, adding that China would continue to produce too many goods and dump them on markets elsewhere.

Sanchez and Planas are heading to Beijing later this week to forge closer economic ties amid the global fallout of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policy, seeking to position Spain as an interlocutor between China and the EU and attract Chinese investment.

Trump's punishing tariffs, which the president says are aimed at ending U.S. trade deficits with many countries, have upended the global trading order, raising fears of recession and wiping trillions of dollars off the market value of major firms.

Planas said that the way the U.S. was negotiating with trading partners did not appear "respectful".

He added that Spain defended its interests within the framework of the European Union, which sought dialogue with the U.S. to resolve differences.

"We have trading partners all over the world. We believe in the existence of a rules-based multilateral trade," Planas said.

The minister added that strengthening ties with Vietnam and China did not contradict the EU's trade principles.

(Reporting by David Latona and Emma Pinedo; Editing by Aislinn Laing and Alex Richardson)