President Trump said he would “certainly” consider dismantling economic ties between the United States and China during his second term in a move known as “decoupling.”
In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Trump told host Steve Hilton that the U.S. doesn’t have to do business with China. Of decoupling, Trump said, “Well, it’s something that if they don’t treat us right, … I would certainly do that.”
Trade tensions, elevated by the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China, have aggravated relations between the two countries. Though a trade deal was signed in February this year, a meeting between U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He to review it was postponed indefinitely in August.
“We were doing better than we’ve ever done with China, and I was all set to rock and roll. And then, we got hit with this damn situation,” the president added.
Trump, who is vying for a second term in November, has released an agenda that calls for bringing back 1 million jobs from China.
And he said in the interview that if elected, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would allow Beijing to “own our country.”
Attitudes toward China have changed since Trump’s election, with the number of people viewing the country unfavorably growing by 26 percentage points since 2018, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
At a briefing Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to Trump’s comments by calling for cooperation over decoupling, according to a transcript.
Trump has said before that he could break American business ties with China, a major purchaser of U.S. agricultural goods.
“We could cut off the whole relationship,” Trump told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo in May as the White House sought retaliation for what it viewed as China’s failure to share information about the coronavirus.
