President Donald Trump called on China to reach out to him in order to kick off negotiations aimed at resolving the escalating trade fight between the world’s two largest economies.
“The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday, reading what she said was a statement Trump dictated.
“There’s no difference between China and any other country except they are much larger, and China wants what we have, what every country wants, what we have — the American consumer — or to put another way, they need our money,” the statement continued.
The comments are a fresh sign the US and China continue to dig in their heels, indicating there is no end in sight to fight that has seen both sides raise trade barriers to staggering levels.
China ordered airlines not to take further deliveries of Boeing Co. jets, according to people familiar with the matter. It marked Beijing’s latest move to retaliate against Trump’s decision to hike levies to as high as 145% on Chinese goods.
The US president criticized China in a social media post earlier Tuesday, saying the government “just reneged on the big Boeing deal” signed during his first administration.
The Trump administration has said it is negotiating with dozens of other trading partners to lower trade barriers in exchange for relief on higher tariffs the US president imposed on them. Those duties were paused for 90 days on April 10 to allow time for talks.
Trump is considering at least 15 proposals from other countries and has made it clear to his trade team “he wants to personally sign off on all of these deals,” Leavitt said.
“There’s a lot of work to do. We very much understand that, but we do believe that we can announce some deals very soon,” the press secretary added, without specifying which nations were close to reaching agreements.
But the US and China thus far have not engaged at a high level, with both nations trading insults and ratcheting tariffs higher. China announced Friday that it will apply a 125% tariff on all US goods from April 12, the latest escalation that started on April 2 when Trump imposed a 34% duty on Chinese imports.
The US president raised those duties higher each time China announced response measures. The White House has also insisted that China must reach out first to start talks, while Beijing has indicated it’s not clear about the US’s demands.
