US President Donald Trump said that the US is “doing very well with China, and talking!” — but suggested that he was not ready to sign a trade deal, hours after his top economic adviser laid out a potential timeline for the resumption of substantive discussions with Beijing.
Trump vowed that the US was “poised for big growth” after various trade deals are reached, but speaking to reporters as he departed New Jersey for Washington on Sunday, Trump said that Beijing needs a trade agreement more than the US, given the relatively weak condition of China’s economy.
Trump made about 40 minutes of wide-ranging remarks after more than a week spent at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The president tied trade negotiations with the ongoing situation in Hong Kong on camera for the first time, saying that a deal between the US and China would be harder if there is a violent conclusion to protests there, because of concerns raised by US lawmakers.
Last week, he tweeted that “of course China wants to make a deal. Let them work humanely with Hong Kong first!”
Trump also pushed back on media reports this weekend that the US Department of Commerce is poised to renew Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) temporary general license to buy supplies for the US.
“Huawei is a company that we may not do business with at all,” Trump said, calling the Chinese company a “national security threat.”
Yesterday, US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that the US would delay for 90 days restrictions that the Trump administration has imposed on some of Huawei’s business operations.
Some telecoms in the US are “dependent” on Huawei, and thus a 90-day reprieve was deemed appropriate, Ross said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business.
The next deadline would be on about Nov. 19, Ross said, adding that the Commerce Department decided to place 46 more Huawei subsidiaries on its entity list.
US National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow earlier on Sunday said that recent telephone calls between US and Chinese trade negotiators had been “positive,” potentially opening the door to further progress toward a deal.
More teleconference meetings with Chinese negotiators are planned over the next week to 10 days, the White House National Economic Council director said on the Fox News Sunday program.
“If those deputies meetings pan out, as we hope they will, and we can have a substantive renewal of negotiations, then we are planning to have China come to the USA and meet with our principals to continue the negotiations and the talks,” Kudlow added.
Kudlow and White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, made multiple appearances on Sunday talk shows to discuss the economy and China trade prospects after a tumultuous week in financial markets that included an 800-point dip in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday, its worst rout of the year.
Major US equity indexes, often referenced by Trump as a litmus test of his success, have been essentially flat over the past 12 months.
“There’s no recession on the horizon,” Kudlow said on Fox, adding that there were no plans for additional fresh measures to boost the economy and that the Trump administration would stay the course on its current agenda.
“Consumers are working, at higher wages,” Kudlow said on NBC News’ Meet the Press. “They are spending at a rapid pace. They’re actually saving also while they’re spending — that’s an ideal situation.”
Navarro, on ABC’s This Week, predicted “a strong economy through 2020 and beyond.”
On CNN, Navarro disputed that the US had seen an inverted yield curve, often a forerunner of recession as it signals market expectations for weaker growth ahead.
“Technically, we didn’t have a yield curve inversion,” he said on the State of the Union. “All we’ve had is a flat yield curve.”
And that, Navarro said, was “the result of a very strong Trump economy.”
Navarro on Sunday once again criticized US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and the US Federal Reserve.
“The Federal Reserve chairman should look in the mirror and say: ‘I raised rates too fast,’” he said on CNN.
Trump and his top aides have repeatedly said that Beijing, not US companies or consumers, are bearing the brunt of the tariffs imposed on imports from China.
Trump on Sunday tweeted that China is “eating” the tariffs.
Navarro rejected a study by researchers at the University of Chicago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and elsewhere that found that US importers are shouldering the vast majority of price changes from the tariffs.
“That dog won’t hunt,” Navarro said, adding that tariffs “aren’t hurting anyone in the United States.”
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