Biden to hold talks with Chinese prez on lifting US tariffs
Agencies
REHOBOTH BEACH, DELAWARE: President Joe Biden said he’ll be talking to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping “soon” and is weighing possible action on US tariffs on China that were imposed by the Trump administration. “We’re in the process of doing that,” Biden told reporters on Saturday when asked whether he had decided to lift any of the tariffs. “I’m in the process of making up my mind.”
Biden’s administration is weighing what to do about then President Donald Trump’s tariffs on some $300 billion of goods imported from the US economy’s biggest competitor.
While some businesses have benefited from the tariffs protecting them from Chinese imports, companies that use the goods as inputs in areas including manufacturing have been hurt. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers last week the Biden administration is looking to “reconfigure” the tariffs and acknowledged that they were contributing to higher prices for goods in the US with inflation running at the hottest pace in 40 years.
Biden declined to say when specifically he’d talk to Xi, saying only “I’m going to be talking to him.”
US officials are working to set a possible call this summer amid high tension between the world’s two biggest economies, including on matters such as Taiwan, Ukraine and human rights.
Biden falls from bike
Biden took a tumble as he was riding his bicycle near his beach home in the state of Delaware on Saturday morning, but was unhurt. A video from a White House pool report showed the 79-year-old president immediately getting up after his fall. He then says: “I’m good.”
He was biking with First Lady Jill Biden in a state park near their beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and had stopped to talk to onlookers when he fell.