Trump hails ‘superb progress’ as US-China talks proceed

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

“We are able to all play video games,” Trump instructed reporters on the Oval Workplace. “Who made the primary name? … Would not matter. It solely issues what occurs in that group. However I’ll let you know 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 satisfy with Chinese language counterparts this weekend in Geneva, Switzerland, for preliminary talks. The objective is deescalation, fairly than progress on a selected commerce deal, Bessent mentioned.

On Wednesday, Trump mentioned 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 mentioned they is perhaps, relying on how commerce talks go.

“We’ll see,” Trump mentioned. “Proper now it is at 145%. You’ll be able to’t get any greater than that, so we all know it is coming down.”

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

“That is only the start,” Trump mentioned. “We’ll be having conferences, or, in some unspecified time in the future, we cannot have conferences, we simply put out a press release that we simply signed this nation, that nation. And after a lot of these are carried out — 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.'”