President Donald Trump said he feels “no pressure” to resolve his trade war with China as his administration prepares for new talks on the dispute.
U.S. equities pulled back from earlier gains after Trump fired off the message on Twitter Thursday.
Trump appeared to dispute a paragraph in a Wall Street Journal story on the coming talks saying that he faces rising political pressure to settle the fight and end Chinese retaliation against U.S. exporters ahead of the November elections.
“The Wall Street Journal has it wrong, we are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us,” Trump said in a Twitter post Thursday. “Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing. We will soon be taking in Billions in Tariffs & making products at home. If we meet, we meet?”
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrumpThe Wall Street Journal has it wrong, we are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us. Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing. We will soon be taking in Billions in Tariffs & making products at home. If we meet, we meet?Sent via Twitter for iPhone.
U.S. Invite
China has received an invitation and is working on the details with the U.S., commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said at regular briefing in Beijing Thursday. That invite was recently extended by senior officials led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The White House has sought to pressure Beijing to reduce its trade surplus with America and protect intellectual property rights of U.S. companies, which it says are abused in China. The Trump administration has already imposed duties on $50 billion of Chinese exports since July, which spurred immediate in-kind retaliation from Beijing.
“We are in communication right now and you could say that communication has picked up a notch,” Larry Kudlow, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, said on Wednesday, also confirming the report. “It’s positive thing.”
$200 Billion
If the U.S. presses ahead with planned additional tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods and more, it will hurt the interests of China, the U.S. and the world, Gao told reporters in Beijing. China urged the U.S. to observe World Trade Organization rules and correct the excessive use of trade remedy measures, he said.
There are still great differences between the two sides, but China will accept the invitation and probably send Vice Premier Liu He to lead the talks, according to Yao Shaohua, an economist at ABCI Securities Co. Ltd in Hong Kong. Liu led a previous round of talks in May, reaching a deal with Mnuchin which was then abandoned by a Tweet from Trump.
China may have concerns that Trump will go back and forth again as the U.S. president did during previous negotiations in May, said Yao, but in the end it hopes for a breakthrough.
Trump hasn’t yet pulled the trigger on tariffs on the additional $200 billion in Chinese goods.
‘Short Notice’
A comment period for that round of tariffs expired last week without U.S. action. He said last week that he’s lined up an another $267 billion of Chinese products for duties “on short notice if I want to,” which would cover virtually everything the country exports to the U.S., including consumer goods such as clothing and Apple smartphones.
China has said it would be forced to retaliate against all of the U.S.’s measures, fanning concerns that the trade war could dent the global economic outlook.
Efforts to end the trade war have fizzled so far. Officials from both countries have met four times for formal talks, most recently in August, when Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs, David Malpass, led discussions in Washington with Chinese Vice Minister Wang Shouwen.