Trump: 'I'm very happy right now. We're taking in billions of dollars,' from China in tariffs
US President Donald Trump has said that he has not agreed to roll back tariffs on Chinese goods, dampening the optimism about a possible resolution to a bitter trade conflict.
“They’d like to have a rollback. I haven’t agreed to anything,” Trump told reporters on Friday before departing the White House for Georgia. “China would like to get somewhat of a rollback, not a complete rollback because they know I won’t do it.”
He claimed that China wanted to make a deal more than he did, adding that the American tariffs were generating "billions of dollars" for US treasury.
"I'm very happy right now. We're taking in billions of dollars," he said.
Trump’s remarks came after Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson Gao Feng said on Thursday that China and the United States have “agreed to remove the additional duties imposed on each other’s products in different phases after they make progress” in striking a trade deal.
A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the scrapping the tariffs would be part of the first phase of an interim trade agreement that is still being finalized before Trump and President Xi Jinping sign it, possibly in December.
US stocks dipped following Trump's comments and the dollar to fell against the yen.
The Trump administration launched the trade war with China last year, when it first imposed unusually heavy tariffs on imports from the Asian country. Since then, the two sides have exchanged tariffs on more than 360 billion dollars in two-way trade. The US says a primary goal of the aggressive tariff strategy is to decrease the trade imbalance with China, which totaled 379 billion dollars in 2018.
China had lifted punitive tariffs on American cars and auto parts earlier this year as a goodwill measure while trade talks were underway.
In October, Trump announced a partial deal after meetings in Washington with a Chinese trade delegation.
The deal announced by Trump offered a temporary reprieve from tariffs planned for mid-October.
However, it did not roll back any of the stinging import duties already imposed on hundreds of billions of dollars in trade between the economic powers. Neither did it address another round of import taxes planned for December.
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