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President Donald Trump said he is willing to lower tariffs on China at some point because the levies now are so high that the world’s two largest economies have essentially stopped doing business with each other.
Trump has placed tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese imports. China has retaliated with tariffs of 125% on American imports. The moves rattled markets and threaten to drive up prices for manufacturing equipment as well as affordable goods that many Americans rely on, including clothing and toys.
“At some point, I’m going to lower them, because otherwise, you could never do business with them, and they want to do business very much,” Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker.
He noted recent economic pains in China, where factory activity has slipped into the worst contraction since 2023, according to the official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index. New export orders fell to the lowest since December 2022 and recorded the biggest drop since April that year, when Shanghai entered a citywide pandemic lockdown.
Trump also praised some statements that China made recently as “positive”, while reiterating that any deal between the two countries would reach has to be “fair.”
China said on Friday it was assessing the possibility of trade talks with the US since Trump’s tariffs were announced last month, the first sign that negotiations could begin between the two sides.
“China is currently evaluating this,” the ministry’s statement said. US stocks rose on Friday following those signals from Beijing.
On Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he has no plans to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, saying the two sides are “talking about different things.”
He added that Washington is in trade discussions with several countries, including China, and emphasized he’s looking for a “fair deal,” repeating his claim that “China has been ripping us off for many years.”
--With assistance from Yian Lee and Jasmine Ng.
(Updates with Trump’s latest remarks in final two paragraphs)
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