Donald Trump says he might let March 1 deadline for new China tariffs ‘slide’ if trade war deal is near
- Trump says the US has a big team in China trying to reach a trade agreement and Beijing very much wants to make a deal
- ‘I could see myself letting that slide,’ he said of the deadline to raise US tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 per cent
US President Donald Trump will consider pushing back a March 1 deadline for trade negotiations with China if both sides are close to making a deal.
At a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday, he said he could see himself “letting that slide for a little while”, referring to the looming deadline, at which point US tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese imports are scheduled to increase from 10 to 25 per cent.
“But generally speaking, I'm not inclined to do that,” he added.
A deadline extension would likely rattle hardliners within the administration. In December after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said March 1 was a “hard deadline”.
Trump’s comments came as Lighthizer and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin landed in Beijing ahead of two days of high-level talks later this week.