Trump rules out reopening negotiations on trade deal with China

PTI, May 12, 2020, 11:38 AM IST

Washington: President Donald Trump has said he is “not interested” in reopening negotiations on the trade deal with China, days after the US warned Beijing of very significant consequences for not honouring the bilateral agreement early this year to end their bruising trade war.

Trump’s remarks came in response to a question on a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post which said that China would like to reopen negotiations on the trade deal to make the terms more favourable to Beijing. Is this something you’d be interested in doing? he was asked.

“No. Not at all. Not even a little bit. No, I’m not interested. We signed the deal. I had heard that too they’d like to reopen the trade talk to make it a better deal for them,” Trump told reporters during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, May 11.

Trump said, “China has been taking advantage of the US for many decades because his predecessors allowed that to happen.”

“No, I’m not interested in that. Let’s see if they live up to the deal that they signed,” he said.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on May 4 warned that if China does not honour the trade agreement, “there would be very significant consequences in the relationship and in the global economy as to how people would do business with them.”

Trump too had earlier said that he will terminate the trade deal with China if they do not honour its provisions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that originated in the country.

Under the US-China trade deal signed in January, Beijing agreed to buy at least USD 200 billion more in US products and services in 2020-2021, the two-year period than it did in 2017.

However, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in a report said that China could invoke a clause in the agreement that allows for fresh trade consultations between the two countries “in the event of a natural disaster or another unforeseeable event”.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration on Monday asked the federal retirement funds to not to invest in the Chinese equities.