President Trump: Ball in China’s court on tariffs

Kathmandu:  The White House has said President Donald Trump believes it is up to China to come to the negotiating table on trade.

The White House said those statements on Tuesday, after the US president accused Beijing of reneging on a major Boeing deal.  ‘The ball is in China’s court, China needs to make a deal with us, we don’t have to make a deal with them,’ said a statement from President Trump read out by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

‘There’s no difference between China and any other country except they are much larger,’ Leavitt told a briefing. Leavitt’s comments came after Trump said that China had “reneged” on a major deal with US aviation giant Boeing. This followed a Bloomberg news report that Beijing ordered airlines not to take further deliveries of the company’s jets.

President Trump has slapped new tariffs on friend and foe since returning to the presidency this year, but reserved his heaviest blows for China, imposing additional 145 % levies on many Chinese imports. China on Wednesday said its economy grew a forecast-beating 5.4%  in the first quarter as exporters rushed to get goods out of factory gates ahead of the US levies.

Senior official Sheng Laiyun from China’s National Bureau of Statistics said that the US tariffs will put certain pressures on our country’s foreign trade and economy. Hong Kong’s postal service said it would stop shipping goods bound for the United States in response to Trump’s “bullying” tariffs.

President Trump scrapped the “de minimis” exemption allowing goods valued under $800 to enter without duties or certain taxes, a rule which helped the rapid growth of Chinese-founded online retailers Shein and Temu.

RSS/AFP