US President Donald Trump has threatened to terminate thetrade deal with China if Beijing did not honour its provisions in the wake ofthe coronavirus pandemic that originated in the country.
While China has reported 82,788 novel coronavirus cases,including 4,632 fatalities, the US registered over 824,600 cases and more than45,290 deaths — the highest in the world.
China and the US in January signed Phase-1 of the trade dealas the world’s two top economic powers move forward to end their bittertit-for-tat two-year tariff war that had rattled markets and weighed on theglobal economy.
The deal, which calls on China to buy USD 200 billion worthof US products, is set to move ahead as planned. However, the US-China Economicand Security Review Commission in a report said China could invoke a clause inthe agreement that allows for fresh trade consultations between the twocountries “in the event of a natural disaster or other unforeseeable event”.
“If that happens, we’ll do a termination and we’ll dowhat I can do better than anybody,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday duringhis daily White House press conference on coronavirus.
The president was responding to a question as to howconfident he is that the Chinese are not going to invoke the natural disasterclause mentioned in the trade deal.
“There is nobody ever been tougher on China thanme,” Trump said, reiterating that China had been ripping the US off foryears till he was elected as the president.
“Take a look, USD 200 billion, USD 300 billion, USD 400billion, USD 500 billion a year. How did they ever let a thing like thishappen? Now, if you look at this last year, the deficit went way down to theworld,” he said.
Trump launched the trade war with China in 2018, demandingBeijing to reduce the massive trade deficit, which was USD 375.6 billion in2017.
The two countries so far have imposed additional tariffs onnearly USD half trillion worth of goods. The US has imposed tariffs on morethan USD 360 billions of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated with tariffson over USD 110 billions of American products.
“Now it’s much different. But a lot of things arehappening. Great things were happening except all of these sudden out ofnowhere came the invisible enemy. We think we know where it came from, andwe’ll be talking about that probably a lot, but came the invisible enemy.There’s nobody tougher than me on China,” Trump said.