Steve Bannon: US-China trade deal unlikely this year
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said on Sunday he doesn’t expect a trade agreement with China to be reached this year.
“I don't think you're going to see a deal by 2020,” Bannon told “Sunday Morning Futures.” “I think the Chinese Communist Party want a weak Democrat as president.”
President Trump said last week that the U.S. is not ready to make a deal with China, and while the two countries continue to have an “open dialogue,” he told reporters outside the White House “we’ll see whether or not we keep our meeting in September.”
“I think President Trump's got [Chinese President Xi Jinping], he's got all the face cards right now. He holds all the cards I think he's being very consistent,” Bannon said.
Still, the U.S. and China have taken their respective blows to each other as the trade war continues. Last week, Beijing announced it will suspend the purchases of U.S. agricultural products, a direct response to Trump’s announcement that Washington would impose a 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of Chinese exports.
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“This is a serious violation of the meeting between the heads of state of China and the United States,” a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement, adding that it won’t “rule out import tariffs on newly purchased US agricultural products after August 3.”
Also last week, the Treasury Department, with Trump’s backing, designated China a currency manipulator.