The Trump administration reiterated its threat to hit China with tariffs on an additional $257 billion of goods if its president, Xi Jinping, does not make trade concessions during a meeting later this week with President Trump at the G-20 summit in Argentina.
Larry Kudlow, economic adviser to Trump, said that “nothing is written in stone” but China had to take serious action to avoid punitive tariffs.
“There is a good possibility that [Trump] can make a deal, and he is open [to] it … but he is perfectly happy to stand by his tariff policies,” Kudlow said during a Tuesday White House press conference. “That may not be his first choice, but that is his view.”
Kudlow, a former Wall Street investment adviser, said that putting the additional tariffs up wouldn’t be an anti-free trade move because China’s own predatory policies had already undermined any hopes for that.
“I think of it as possibly a long rainbow here. At the end of the rainbow, there is a pot of gold. You open up that pot, and you have prosperity for the rest of the world. But you gotta get through that long rainbow,” Kudlow said.
President Trump is set to to talk with Jinping during the G-20 Summit in Argentina beginning on Nov. 30. On Monday Trump reiterated a threat to go forward with additional tariffs on Chinese goods, on top of the tariffs on $250 billion worth of goods it has already instituted, “If we don’t make a deal, then I’m going to put the $267 billion additional on,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal, adding he hadn’t decided whether those tariffs would be 10 or 25 percent.
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