‘Plan B with China ready’: Trump on trade deal ahead of G20 meet with Xi Jinping

PTI, Jun 27, 2019, 9:37 AM IST

Washington: In the absence of a trade deal with China, the US has Plan B ready that would include doing less business with the country and taking in billions of dollars from it every month, President Donald Trump has said.

The world’s two largest economies are currently negotiating a trade deal for the past several months to end the trade war which began after Trump imposed tariffs on the Chinese imports.

Trump is scheduled to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Osaka, Japan on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit meeting over the weekend.

The two leaders are expected to discuss the status of the trade agreement and find ways to finalise the deal, which has been stuck for the past several weeks. US alleges that China went back on its commitment from the draft trade bill.

After coming to power, Trump has imposed massive import tariffs on Chinese products and has threatened to add more. He wants to address the balance of trade with China and has accused it of intellectual property theft and forced coercion of American companies.

“You know, when you’re the loser of USD 500 billion – when you were making USD 500 billion, the worst thing that can happen to you is you stop doing business. It would be really bad for China, and I don’t want to be bad for China,” Trump said.

America does not have an opening in China, he alleged. “You know China is not open. We’re open but China is not open, so if we don’t have the opening of China, if we don’t have the things that were negotiated and maybe even more than that.

“Look, right now we are getting 25 per cent on USD 250 billion worth of goods; nobody ever heard of such a thing. It’s massive amounts of money. Don’t play – don’t let anyone tell you that we’re paying. We’re not paying, China’s paying for it,” Trump he said.

China has devalued its currency in order to pay for it, he said. “They’ve devalued their currency and they’re pouring money into their economy and pouring money into these companies which generally are Chinese-owned indirectly or directly, and we’re not paying anything for it. So they’re paying us 25 per cent -you know our consumer.

“They always say China is different than other countries in some other countries that can happen, but I view tariffs differently than a lot of other people. And by the way, since tariffs have been on, our market has gone through the roof if you know what I’m talking about,” the President added.