Trump: China hurt 'very badly' by tariffs, deal near
The Trump administration has made progress in the battle with China over trade, according to President Trump, who said a “real trade deal” is near.
“We had a negotiation going on for about two days, it’s going extremely well,” Trump said while delivering remarks at the White House on Friday. “We are very much working very closely with China and President Xi, who I respect a lot, very good relationship that we have, and we are a lot closer than we ever were in this country with having a real trade deal.”
The latest round of talks between U.S. and Chinese negotiators comes ahead of a March 1 deadline for a planned tariff hike on $200 billion of Chinese imports. The tit-for-tat dispute between the world’s two largest economies has been going on for months. And President Trump said that everything was on the table.
“We are covering everything. All of the points that people have been talking about for years that said couldn’t be done whether it was theft or anything… the unfairness,” he said. “We’ve been losing on average $375 billion a year with China, a lot of people think its $506 billion. Some people think it’s much more than that. We are going to be leveling the playing field.”
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Trump added that the tariffs were having a profound effect and that they would be removed if a deal was reached.
"The tariffs are hurting China very badly, they don’t want them,” he said, “And frankly if we can make the deal it’d be my honor to remove them but otherwise we are having many billions of dollars pouring into our Treasury — we’ve never had that before with China.”