President Trump said Friday that a deal on trade with China was getting closer, lifting hopes for a breakthrough even as advisers downplayed the potential for talks between the two countries.
“We’re getting much closer to doing something,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.
“They very much want to make a deal,” he said.
Trump is scheduled to meet at the end of the month with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the G-20 economic summit of world leaders in Argentina. In recent months, the Trump administration has levied tariffs and threatened to impose new ones to try to extract trade concessions from China, but so far the two sides have not engaged in serious talks to resolve the dispute.
Earlier Friday, top Trump advisers downplayed the prospects for a deal or for a breakthrough to go along with the G20 meeting.
“There’s no massive movement to deal with trade,” said National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow in an interview with CNBC. “We have already put out asks to China with respect to trade.”
Kudlow added that he and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had begun collecting those asks in a document for the president to take to the summit as part of a “normal, routine run-through,” but that it did not mean any deal is imminent.
“We’re not on the cusp of a deal,” said Kudlow, who added that China’s shown no interest in negotiating on trade and that Trump could consider another $265 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods.
Kudlow also said that a call Thursday between Trump and Xi was “pleasant and positive,” but that little progress on trade was made beyond adding it to the list of topics to discuss between the two leaders at the upcoming summit.
Still, Trump insisted today that “a lot of progress has been made.”
“They understand that if a deal isn’t made we’re doing very well the way things are now,” added Trump.
