Washington: The United States is not in a rush to enter into a trade deal with China, the negotiations for which has been undergoing since December last year, US President Donald Trump said.
At the same time, talks with the Chinese on a bilateral trade deal has been going on quite well, Trump said, amid reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping has postponed his trip to the US president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida later this month.
“I think things are going along very well. We’ll just see what the date is. I’m in no rush. I want the deal to be right, much more importantly. Somebody said I’m in a rush. I’m not in a rush at all,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
“Right now, we’re getting billions and billions of dollars of tariffs paid into our coffers. I am not in a rush whatsoever. It’s got to be the right deal, and it’s got to be a good deal for us. And if it’s not, we’re not going to make that deal. But I will say that deal is going along very nicely,” Trump said.
Responding to a question, Trump said his Chinese counterpart does not end up in what he did in Hanoi last month when he walked out of his summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un because the deal on the table was not in the best interest of the US.
“I think President Xi saw that I’m somebody that believes in walking when a deal is not done. And, you know, there’s always a chance it could happen, and he probably wouldn’t want that. That could be a reason,” Trump said when asked about the cancellation of his proposed summit with Xi in Mar-a-Lago.
“But we can do it either way. We can have the deal completed and come and sign, or we can get the deal almost completed and negotiate some of the final points. I would prefer that, but it doesn’t matter that much,” he said.
Trump said the US economy is doing very good, but that is not the case with China. “Our country is doing great. China would like to make a deal and we’d like to make a deal. We’ll see. We have a very good relationship. I have a very good relationship with President Xi. We’re going to see what happens,” he said.
“But it’s an exciting time in terms of trade. We just made a deal with Mexico, Canada. We just made a deal with South Korea. We have other deals that we have cooking,” he said.
PTI