President Donald Trump said Friday a China trade deal is "potentially very close," but rejected comments from President Xi Jinping that the phase one agreement should be reached on the basis of mutual respect and equality between the two countries.
I told President XI this can't be like an even deal, because we're starting at the floor, you're already at the ceiling," Trump said during an hour-long telephone interview on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "We have to have a much better deal. The bottom line, we have a very good chance to make a deal.
"I didn't like his word equality because we started off so low,"
The United States, he added, lost $500 billion a year to China for "many, many years," not including the losses from the theft of intellectual property.
Xi wants a deal "much more than I want to make it," Trump said. "I'm not anxious to make it. We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs. We never took in 10 cents (before)."
The ongoing pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong have also been a factor in the deal, and Trump said Friday if it wasn't for him, "Hong Kong would have been obliterated in 14 minutes. He has a million soldiers standing outside of Hong Kong, are not going only because I asked him."
Meanwhile, the United States has the "greatest economy we ever had," as it has "increased by $20 trillion."
"China has gone down by 30 or $35 trillion," said Trump. "If crooked Hillary (Clinton) had won, China would be the largest economy in the world. They were going to surpass us, expected to in the second year of the presidency...they will never catch up."
Meanwhile, U.S. farmers are "doing great" after the deal talks began, including receiving money from tariffs and after the U.S. signed trade deals with Japan and South Korea.
China is calling on Trump to veto legislation from the Senate to support the Hong Kong student protesters, and Trump said Friday that the U.S. has to stand with Hong Kong, but he is also standing with Xi.
"He is a friend of mine," said Trump. "He is an incredible guy...I would like to see them work it out. We have to see them work it out. I stand with Hong Kong, I stand with freedom, I stand with all the things we want to do. We're in the process of making the largest trade deal in history. If we could do that (it) would be great."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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