US President Donald Trump on Sunday said the US was meeting with many countries, including China, on trade deals, and his main priority with China was to secure a fair trade deal.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had no plans to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, but US officials were speaking with Chinese officials about a variety of different things.
Asked if any trade agreements would be announced this week, Trump said that could “very well be” but gave no details.
Trump’s top officials have engaged in a flurry of meetings with trading partners since the president on April 2 imposed a 10 percent tariff on most countries, along with higher tariff rates for many trading partners that were then suspended for 90 days. He has also imposed 25 percent tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 145 percent tariffs on China.
He suggested that he did not expect to reach an agreement with some countries, but could instead be “setting a certain tariff” for those trading partners in the next two to three weeks. It was not immediately clear if he was referring to the reciprocal tariffs announced on April 2, which are due to kick in on July 8 after a 90-day pause.
Trump repeated his claim that China had been “ripping us for many years” on global trade, adding that former President Richard Nixon’s move to reach out and establish relations with China was “the worst thing” he ever did.
Trump sounded more upbeat about China and the prospects for reaching an agreement in an interview with NBC News that was taped on Friday and broadcast on Sunday.
In the interview, he acknowledged that he had been “very tough with China,” essentially cutting off trade between the world’s top two economies, but said Beijing now wanted to reach an agreement.
“We’ve gone cold turkey,” he said. “That means we’re not losing a trillion dollars … because we’re not doing business with them right now. And they want to make a deal. They want to make a deal very badly. We’ll see how that all turns out, but it’s got to be a fair deal.”
On Friday, Beijing said it is “evaluating” an offer from Washington to hold talks over Trump’s 145 percent tariffs although it warned the United States not to engage in “extortion and coercion.”
Washington and Beijing have been locked in a cat-and-mouse game over tariffs, with both sides unwilling to be seen to back down in a trade war that has roiled global markets and upended supply chains.
The Commerce Ministry said the United States has approached China to seek talks over Trump’s tariffs and Beijing’s door was open for discussions, signalling a potential de-escalation in the trade war.
The statement comes a day after a social media account linked to Chinese state media said Washington had been seeking to start talks, and a week after Trump claimed discussions were already underway, which Beijing denied.
“The US has recently taken the initiative on many occasions to convey information to China through relevant parties, saying it hopes to talk with China,” the statement said, adding that Beijing was “evaluating this”.
“Attempting to use talks as a pretext to engage in coercion and extortion would not work,” it said.
The US should be prepared to take action in “correcting erroneous practices” and cancel unilateral tariffs, the Commerce Ministry said, adding that Washington needed to show “sincerity” in negotiations.
The punishing US tariffs on many Chinese products saw Beijing respond in April with levies on imports of US goods of 125 percent, as Beijing labelled Trump’s tariff strategy “a joke.”
The tit-for-tat increases stand to make goods trade between the world’s two largest economies impossible, analysts say, with import duties beyond about 35 percent potentially wiping out Chinese exporters’ profit margins and making American products in China similarly exorbitant.
China has repeatedly denied it is seeking to negotiate a way out of the tariffs with the United States, appearing instead to be betting that Washington makes the first move.
Trump’s decision to single out Beijing for hefty import duties comes at a particularly difficult time for China, which is struggling with deflation due to sluggish economic growth and a prolonged property crisis.
Beijing has expressed its anger at the tariffs, which it says are tantamount to bullying and cannot stop the rise of the world’s second-largest economy.
Alongside leveraging its propaganda machine to hit back at the duties, China has quietly created a list of US-made products it will exempt from its retaliatory 125 percent tariffs – including select pharmaceuticals, microchips and jet engines – Reuters has reported.
As tensions between both sides fester, the Trump administration on Friday ended US duty-free access for low-value shipments from China and Hong Kong, known as “de minimis” exemptions.
