President Trump said trade negotiations with China will be “substantive” and contrasted the UK trade negotiations with the more strained relationship with Beijing and the European Union.
“We can all play games,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office. “Who made the first call? … Doesn’t matter. It only matters what happens in that group. But I will tell you that China very much wants to make a deal.”
Top US officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, are set to meet with Chinese counterparts this weekend in Geneva, Switzerland, for preliminary talks. The goal is deescalation, rather than progress on a specific trade deal, Bessent said.
On Wednesday, Trump said that he would not make concessions to get China to the negotiating table. But when asked on Thursday if China tariffs could be lowered, Trump said they might be, depending on how trade talks go.
“We’re going to see,” Trump said. “Right now it’s at 145%. You can’t get any higher than that, so we know it’s coming down.”
More broadly, Trump suggested that more trade deals will be in the offing soon.
“This is just the beginning,” Trump said. “We’re going to be having conferences, or, at some point, we won’t have conferences, we just put out a statement that we just signed this country, that country. And after a number of these are done — nobody has enough people to do it — we’re just going to put out, ‘X country is going to pay this. And if they open up, they’re going to do this and that.'”
