With China targeting U.S. exports and goods hailing from pro-Trump voting banks, the U.S. President blinked first saying his country is not in a trade war with Beijing.
on Wednesday (April 4), President Donald Trump tweeted: “We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US.
Now, we have a trade deficit of US$500 billion a year, with intellectual property theft of another US$300 billion. We cannot let this continue!
However, the White House is brushing off Beijing’s threat to target American products with retaliatory tariffs.
It said that bringing China into line on “fair and reciprocal” trade will be good for the United States and the international trading system.
“When you are already US$500 billion down, you can’t lose!” said Trump.
But winking at China while the latter is planning a massive retaliation exercise is already seen as a sort of capitulation by the Americans ahead of ‘trade’ talks between the U.S. and China.
Nevertheless, some analysts believe Trump is trying to cool down the Chinese attack on U.S. goods.