US President Donald Trump on Saturday said that trade talks with China were moving along “very nicely,” but Washington would only make a deal with Beijing if it was right for the US.
Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before leaving for a visit to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that the talks had moved more slowly than he would have liked, but China wanted a deal more than he did.
“The trade talks with China are moving along, I think, very nicely and if we make the deal that we want it will be a great deal and if it’s not a great deal, I won’t make it,” he said.
Photo: AFP
“I’d like to make a deal, but it’s got to be the right deal,” he said.
“China very much wants to make a deal,” Trump said. “They’re having the worst year they’ve had in 57 years. Their supply chain is all broken, like an egg. They want to make a deal, perhaps they have to make a deal, I don’t know, I don’t care, that’s up to them.”
Trump said there had been incorrect reporting about US willingness to lift tariffs, which he said had brought in tens of billions of dollars for the US and soon “literally hundreds of billions of dollars.”
“There was a lot of incorrect reporting, but you will see what I’m going to be doing,” he said.
“There’s a difference on tariffs, but we can always get tariffs,” he said.
“The level of tariff lift is incorrect,” Trump said in reference to news reports.
Officials from both countries on Thursday said that China and the US had agreed to roll back tariffs already in place on each others’ goods in a “phase one” trade deal.
On Friday said he had not agreed to a tariff rollback.
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” he told reporters.
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