President Donald Trump cast doubt on the future of his “phase one” trade deal with China, one of the biggest accomplishments of his first term, saying Friday that he’s struggling with Beijing in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic. “Look, I’m having a very hard time with China,” Trump said in an interview on Fox & Friends. “I made a great trade deal months before this whole thing happened. And it was kicking in, you know, a month ago and starting to kick in and starting to produce and then this happens and it sort of overrides so much.”
Trump’s remarks contrasted with statements from Chinese and U.S. officials earlier in the day that followed a phone call among the country’s top trade negotiators, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. They pledged to create favorable conditions for implementation of the bilateral trade deal and cooperate on the economy and public health, according to a statement from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
But Trump has mused about somehow punishing China for the coronavirus outbreak, which has so far killed at least 75,000 Americans. He’s been asked this week whether he might impose tariffs on China because of the virus, which he has suggested is the result of research the country was conducting in a lab in Wuhan, China.
“Nobody else ever made a trade deal with China, because they couldn’t do it, because China wouldn’t do it, because China had a one-way street to rip off the United States. We were losing $500 billion a year, five hundred,” Trump said Friday. “And so I’m very torn, I have not decided yet, if you want to know the truth.”