President Trump publicly contradicted U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer Friday over the details of trade negotiations with China in televised Oval Office comments.
Trump suggested that Lighthizer, the top negotiator in the China talks, was wrong about what form a possible agreement with China would take.
Trump told reporters that the product of his meeting next month with Chinese leader Xi Jinping could not involve “memorandums of understanding” between countries, because such MOUs did not meaningfully bind the parties.
“I don’t like MOUs because they don’t mean anything,” Trump said. “To me, they don’t mean anything. I think you are better off just going into a document.”
His remarks prompted Lighthizer to chime that MOUs were in fact meaningful.
“A memorandum of understanding is a binding agreement between two people,” Lighthizer told the assembled reporters. “That is what we are talking about. It is detailed. It covers everything in great detail. It is just called a memorandum of understanding. It is just a legal term. It is a contract.”
Trump then corrected him. “I think that a memorandum of understanding in a not a contract to the extent that we want,” he said. “We are doing a memorandum of understanding that will be put into a final contract, I assume. But to me, the final contract is really the thing, Bob, and I think you mean that too. A memorandum of understanding is exactly that. It is a memorandum of our understanding is.”
Lighthizer then suggested they just stop using the term altogether. “From now on we are not using the words ‘memorandum of understanding.’ We are going to use the term ‘trade agreement.’ We are never going to use the term again.”
“I like that much better,” said Trump.
