Xi Jinping ‘doesn’t intend to follow through’ on trade war talks and local Chinese officials are ‘like mafioso dons’, says top Donald Trump adviser Larry Kudlow
National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said Xi was ‘holding the game up’
US President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser blamed China’s President Xi Jinping for stalling talks that could end the US-China trade war, and referred to local Chinese government officials as “mafioso dons”, in an interview on Wednesday.
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, made his remarks weeks after the last round of high-level talks between Trump administration officials and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He that were aimed at averting punitive tariffs that went into effect on July 6.
“I do not think President Xi, at the moment, has any intention of following through on the discussions we made … I think Xi is holding the game up,” Kudlow said at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha conference in New York on Wednesday.
During negotiations in May and June, China offered to import more US soybeans and other products to draw down its trade surplus, but Trump has insisted on better access to Chinese markets for US companies and an end to what the White House calls forced technology transfers.
“You open a company on a joint venture basis in a Chinese province, OK, and because you only own 49 per cent, they own 51 per cent or more, the local party leaders – you know, these are like mafioso dons, I'm told,” Kudlow said.
“You have to go and lay your entire blueprint on the table, including the technology, and they will have their experts open it right up.”
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Kudlow also said that China had not “responded at all, not one basis point, to our request to do something about the theft of intellectual property and the forced divestiture of our technology.”