Trump goads China as talks resume
WASHINGTON — As trade talks between the United States and China resumed Tuesday in Shanghai, President Donald Trump began playing down the likelihood of a deal before the 2020 election.
The president’s comments, which came as top negotiators from the two countries were sitting down to dinner at the Fairmont Peace Hotel, underscored the diminishing prospects for a transformative trade deal anytime soon and the extent to which the bilateral relationship has not unfolded in the way that Trump expected.
“I think the biggest problem to a trade deal is China would love to wait and just hope,” the president said. “They hope — it’s not going to happen, I hope, but they would just love if I got defeated so they could deal with somebody like Elizabeth Warren or Sleepy Joe Biden or any of these people, because then they’d be allowed and able to continue to rip off our country like they’ve been doing for the last 30 years.”
Trump’s remarks were fueled, in part, by the fact that China has not begun buying large amounts of American agricultural goods, which the president promised farmers would happen after a meeting with President Xi Jinping of China in June.
Trump emerged from that meeting in Osaka, Japan, saying he had agreed to postpone tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese products and allow American firms to get around a government blacklist and continue selling technology to Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant. In return, Trump said China would immediately start buying “a tremendous amount of food and agricultural product” and that American farmers “are going to be a tremendous beneficiary.”
But no such purchases have
happened, and, in the weeks since, Chinese officials disputed that they had agreed to buy more farm products as a condition of the talks. On Sunday, Chinese state media reported that “millions of tons” of U.S. soybeans had been shipped to China. But Trump on Tuesday said no such purchases had materialized.
China “was supposed to start buying our agricultural product now — no signs that they are doing so,” Trump tweeted. “That is the problem with China, they just don’t come through.”
His comments Tuesday seemed aimed at giving U.S. negotiators more leverage and pressuring China to make concessions during this week’s talks. Trump took credit for China’s weakening economy, saying the tariffs he’s placed on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods have put enormous pressure on the country, costing it jobs and prompting companies to leave.
But he seemed to veer between goading China to quickly accede to U.S. demands and suggesting the country could get a better deal if it waits and a Democrat wins the 2020 presidential election.
“China is dying to make a deal with me. But whether or not I’ll do it — it’s up to me, it’s not up to them,” Trump said. “I think China is willing to give up a lot, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to accept it.”
Stocks dipped Tuesday as investors grew nervous about a prolonged trade war between the world’s two largest economies. The S&P 500 was down 0.3% for most of the trading day.
The president’s remarks have been matched by strident rhetoric on the Chinese side. At a news conference Monday, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called the United States “capricious, arrogant and selfish” after the Trump administration challenged China’s claim to a special status for developing countries at the World Trade Organization.
“There is a catchphrase that got popular just recently in China: ‘Don’t do things like the U.S. does.’ I hope some people of the U.S. side can deeply reflect on it,” she said.
The United States and China have been locked in a protracted trade war for more than a year, imposing tariffs on each other’s products while carrying on a series of on-again, offagain negotiations.