Trump floats slashing China tariffs to 80% with ‘many’ offers ‘within the hopper’

President Trump stated commerce negotiations with China might be “substantive” and contrasted the UK commerce negotiations with the extra strained relationship with Beijing and the European Union.

“We will all play video games,” Trump informed reporters on the Oval Workplace. “Who made the primary name? … Does not matter. It solely issues what occurs in that group. However I’ll inform you that China very a lot needs to make a deal.”

Prime US officers, together with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Commerce Consultant Jamieson Greer, are set to fulfill with Chinese language counterparts this weekend in Geneva, Switzerland, for preliminary talks. The aim is deescalation, moderately than progress on a selected commerce deal, Bessent stated.

On Wednesday, Trump stated that he wouldn’t make concessions to get China to the negotiating desk. However when requested on Thursday if China tariffs could possibly be lowered, Trump stated they may be, relying on how commerce talks go.

“We’ll see,” Trump stated. “Proper now it is at 145%. You may’t get any increased than that, so we all know it is coming down.”

Extra broadly, Trump advised that extra commerce offers might be within the offing quickly.

“That is only the start,” Trump stated. “We’ll be having conferences, or, in some unspecified time in the future, we cannot have conferences, we simply put out an announcement that we simply signed this nation, that nation. And after a variety of these are accomplished — no one has sufficient folks to do it — we’re simply going to place out, ‘X nation goes to pay this. And in the event that they open up, they are going to do that and that.'”