TRUMP THREATENS TO “CUT OFF” TIES WITH CHINA

U.S. President Donald Trump said he doesn’t want to talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping right now and mused about eliminating the largest trading relationship in the world, with tensions high over the coronavirus outbreak.

Asked in a Fox Business Network interview whether he had spoken to Xi recently, Trump said they have “a very good relationship” but “right now, I don’t want to speak to him. I don’t want to speak to him.”

Unprompted, he said that “we could cut off the whole relationship. If we did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion,” an inaccurate reference to the volume of trade between the countries.

Trump has sought to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic as public confidence in his handling of the U.S. outbreak has sunk. There have been more than 1.3 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and at least 82,900 deaths, the most in the world. China has reported only about 4,600 deaths from the disease.

Trump and some of his allies have discussed somehow punishing Beijing for the outbreak, though any economic measures risk harm to the U.S., now in recession due to social-distancing.

“Cheap labour turned out to be very expensive,” Trump said of China.

Trump said he’s examining Chinese firms that trade on the NYSE and Nasdaq but don’t follow U.S. accounting rules. “We are looking at that very strongly,” he said, but he cautioned it could backfire.

“Let’s say we do that, right,” Trump said. “So what are they going to do? They’re going to move their listing to London or someplace else.”