A compelling case for pragmatism
When Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Macau, the world’s gambling capital, the air was thick with anticipation. Macau,often dubbed the “Las Vegas of the East,” is much more than a beacon of wealth and opulence.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he is not interested in talking to China regarding a Phase Two of the trade deal.
In an interview with CBS News, Trump said, “I’m not interested right now in talking to China”.
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“We made a great trade deal. But as soon as the deal was done, the ink wasn’t even dry and they hit us with the plague”, the President further added.
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Earlier this year, the Trump administration had signed a mega phase one deal with China, after intense negotiations between the two countries.
The world’s two largest economies never set a timeline for the second phase, however, and trade negotiations were quickly overshadowed as countries around the world grappled with the coronavirus pandemic.
The pact, a “phase one” deal, was expected to reduce tensions between the two economic giants.
The global pandemic, which Trump blames on Beijing, has intensified already strong tensions between the two countries over an ongoing trade war.
“Relationship with China has been severely damaged. They could have stopped the plague, they could have stopped it, (but) they didn’t stop it. They stopped it from going into the remaining portions of China from Wuhan province. They could have stopped the plague, they didn’t”, Trump earlier said.
Last year, China had called for a rollback of existing tariffs, to which Trump said he did not agree. American officials want large purchases of US farm exports.
In Septemeber 2019, the US had imposed fresh tariffs on $112 billion worth of Chinese imported goods, marking a sharp escalation of the bruising trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
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