Trump says China’s Xi is ‘hard to make a deal with’
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Donald Trump has described Xi Jinping as “extremely hard to make a deal with” as the two countries face off over claims from the US that China is reneging on a trade truce signed in Geneva last month.
“I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
It was not immediately clear if the US president’s comments were in response to recent direct contact with Xi.
The comments follow accusations from Washington last week that China is failing to live up to a promise to approve licences for exports of rare earths, leading to shortages that are threatening to shut down parts of US industry.
China, in turn, accused the US this week of “seriously violating” the trade truce that the two economic powers agreed in Switzerland by issuing new warnings on using Huawei chips globally, halting sales of chip design software to Chinese companies and cancelling visas for Chinese students.
Trump and his officials have insisted that a conversation between the US president and his Chinese counterpart is needed to resolve the latest trade dispute but Beijing has given no indication that it has agreed to a call between the two leaders.
On Tuesday, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi called on Washington to “create the necessary conditions for the return of China-US relations to the right track”, accusing Washington of recently taking “a series of negative measures on unfounded grounds, undermining China’s legitimate rights and interests”.
In comments to David Perdue, US ambassador to China, he argued that Beijing had “earnestly and strictly implemented the consensus reached by both sides” in Geneva.
After the Geneva talks, the two countries slashed tariffs on each other’s goods for at least the next 90 days, with the extra levies the US imposed on China this year falling to 30 per cent and China’s declining to 10 per cent.
As part of the deal, China also agreed to “suspend or cancel” non-tariff measures against the US but did not provide any details.
US officials believed that Beijing would unwind export restrictions on rare earths that Beijing unveiled in early April, and grew increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of approvals. China has made clear that officials did not think the deal covered global export controls on rare earths.
The country controls nearly all of the world’s rare earth processing and dominates the production of permanent magnets made from them. Industry in the US, India and Europe has begun to issue increasingly urgent appeals for faster shipments.
Cui Fan, a government trade adviser and economics professor in Beijing, noted that Washington had long maintained that its export controls on China, used to contain the country’s semiconductor industry, were related to national security and were therefore non-negotiable in talks.
“China’s export control system is, to a large extent, modelled on the US system,” he said on social media on Monday. “In future negotiations, the current status quo in which US export controls are deemed non-negotiable and beyond oversight should not continue.”
