President Donald Trump said Friday he is "torn" about continuing with the phase one trade deal made with China in January, as the coronavirus pandemic was starting to spread, and indicated that there may be problems ahead for the landmark achievement because of the Asian nation's role in the pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands worldwide.
“Look, I’m having a very hard time with China,” Trump told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "I made a great trade deal months before this whole thing happened, and it was kicking in, you know, a month ago and starting to kick in and starting to produce and then this happens, and it sort of overrides it."
On Thursday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in a phone call with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He agreed to cooperate on the economy and public health, reports The Wall Street Journal, quoting China's state-run Xinhua News Agency.
But Trump said he now feels "differently than I did."
"I was very tough with China," he said. "They have to buy $250 billion worth of product, okay, a lot from our farmers. That was the first time nobody else made a trade deal with China because they couldn't do it because China wouldn't do it, because China had a one way street to rip off the United States. We were losing $500 billion a year ... I have not decided yet, if you want to know the truth."
Analysts, however, believe the coronavirus pandemic has made it more difficult for China to meet its promise of reaching the goals agreed to in the phase one trade deal.
Earlier this week, Mnuchin said he expects China will meet its obligations on the bill but warned that if it doesn't, there would be "very significant consequences in the relationship and in the global economy, and to how people would do business with them."
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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