Trump on China: Friendship With Xi 'Was Very Good'

(Newsmax TV's "Spicer and Co.")

By Eric Mack | Wednesday, 03 June 2020 07:19 PM EDT

Seeking to improve and not destroy U.S.-China relations despite roller-coaster trade talks and the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump told Newsmax TV his relationship with President Xi Jinping "was very good."

"Haven't spoken to him in awhile – it was very good," Trump told "Spicer and Co." in an exclusive interview with former press secretary Sean Spicer at the White House on Wednesday. "We did the trade deal: It was one of the great deals ever made.

"China was just ripping off this country. China was taking out $500 billion plus a year for many years – $500 billion, not million, $500 billion – and I changed it around."

On the coronavirus pandemic that many experts have traced back to a point of origin in Wuhan, Trump maintained China "should have never let it happen."

"They should have stopped it at the source, but they didn't and the whole world was affected so badly, so devastatingly with all the death," he added. "Forget about the money, the death.

"The ink wasn't even dry on the trade deal when this happened. But China, before the plague, China had the worst year they've had in 67 years. That's because of me.

"Now, I don't say that with pride, but what's happened is China's been ripping off our country for 30 years or longer."

Globalist organizations have been complicit in permitting China's world economic power at the expense of other nations, particularly the U.S., Trump said.

"The World Trade Organization's been a disaster with respect to China, and so has the World Health Organization, which we've now officially pulled out of," he continued. "So it's a very sad thing that's happened with China."

Trump pointed the special "status" of China as a "developing nation," something that has allowed it to "take advantage" of other countries to get rich and powerful while hamstringing the U.S. on trade, manufacturing, technology, and innovation.

"They're considered in the World Trade a developing nation," Trump said. "China's not a developing nation, China's a very powerful nation, and they're developed. We're all developing nations. We're developing, too, I guess, right?

"I said, 'if China's a developing nation, then we're a developing nation."

"By having that status they have tremendous advantages over the United States, and it's not acceptable," he concluded. "And I let them all know it a long time ago, and it's happening now."

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