President Trump said the China trade deal is “fully intact” after his own trade adviser said it was over just hours before.
“The China Trade Deal is fully intact. Hopefully they will continue to live up to the terms of the Agreement!” the president tweeted Monday night after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said the deal was off.
The China Trade Deal is fully intact. Hopefully they will continue to live up to the terms of the Agreement!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 23, 2020
Navarro said during a Monday Fox News interview that the administration’s trade deal with China was no longer on the table, sending stock market futures into a tumble. Navarro had linked the lack of a deal to the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has affected almost half a million people worldwide.
“It’s over. Yes,” Navarro said in response to a question on the matter.
“Here’s the turning point,” he continued. “They came here on Jan. 15 to sign that trade deal, and that was a full two months after they knew the virus was out and about.”
“It was a time when they had already sent hundreds of thousands of people to this country to spread that virus, and it was just minutes after wheels up when that plane took off that we began to hear about this pandemic,” the trade adviser said.
The remarks came after Navarro bashed Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton for his memoir, which is set to be released this week. In the book, Bolton claims Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping if China could help his reelection campaign by purchasing agricultural products, which Trump allegedly said would help him gain support from farmers for his 2020 campaign.
Trump’s chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow also disputed Navarro’s claim, telling Axios, “The U.S. remains engaged with China over the phase one trade deal signed last January, and according to trade negotiator Bob Lighthizer, the deal is going well. President Trump has made similar comments just recently.”
Navarro himself later walked back the claim, telling the Wall Street Journal he was trying to make broader point about “trust.”
“My comments have been taken wildly out of context. They had nothing at all to do with the Phase I trade deal, which continues in place. I was simply speaking to the lack of trust we now have of the Chinese Communist Party after they lied about the origins of the China virus and foisted a pandemic upon the world,” he said in a statement.
