Nutrition


Trump again threatens to cut China ties after US official ruled it out

Trumph

Donald Trump has renewed his threat to cut ties with China, a day after his diplomats held high-level talks with Beijing and his top US trade negotiator said severing the trade relationship was not a viable option.

The conflicting stances emerged as Washington questioned China’s credibility on accurately reporting the new Covid-19 cluster in Beijing.

Trump wrote on social media that the US “certainly does maintain a policy option, under various conditions, of a complete decoupling from China. Thank you!”.

Trump said he was responding to comments by his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, who has been at the forefront of trade negotiations with Beijing.

Lighthizer told a congressional committee on Wednesday that China so far had been living up to the terms of a “phase one” trade agreement that eased the dispute, and that decoupling the two economic giants was now impossible.

“Do I think that you can sit down and decouple the United States economy from the Chinese economy?” Lighthizer said. “No, I think that was a policy option years ago. I don’t think it’s a … reasonable policy option at this point.”

Lighthizer said he expected to see more supply chains moving to the United States because of tax and regulatory changes, but also noted that the US-China trade deal would result in significant positive changes and increased Chinese purchases of US goods and services.

In his post, Trump attempted to let his trade official off the hook: “It was not Ambassador Lighthizer’s fault (yesterday in Committee) in that perhaps I didn’t make myself clear.”

The contradictory positions come amid multiple points of friction between the world’s two largest economies, including trade, China’s moves to impose new security legislation on Hong Kong, and the coronavirus.

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