Coronavirus: Donald Trump says tariff talks with China paused as the two countries cooperate on halting pandemic
- Trump says ‘nobody cares about trade’ as Covid-19 sweeps through the US, with confirmed cases exceeding 101,000 and deaths of more than 1,500
- US leader praised the Chinese president after the pair promised to cooperate to contain the Covid-19 pandemic
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that “nobody cares about trade” amid the Covid-19 pandemic, brushing off questions about whether he reached any tariff agreements with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in a recent phone conversation.
Trump also denied a Wall Street Journal report that came out during his briefing, which said that his administration was preparing to suspend some tariffs amid the pandemic.
“President Xi never even brought it up last night. It wasn’t even discussed,” said Trump, calling the report “fake news”.
Trump made a rebalancing of trade with China a cornerstone of his foreign policy when he took office in January 2017, a priority that prompted him to slap punitive tariffs of up to 25 per cent on US$360 billion worth of imports from the country.
After more than a dozen rounds of negotiations, the two sides reached a “phase-one” trade agreement in January under which China will buy an additional US$200 billion American goods and services over two years. That includes US$32 billion in agricultural products.
“I must tell you this whole invisible enemy has taken over the world,” the president said in a daily briefing at the White House. “It’s hard to talk about ‘hey how you doing with buying from the farmers’.”