President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday morning that the U.S. is in a "fantastic position" in trade negotiations with China, defending his administration's escalating trade war with Beijing for the second straight morning with a flurry of posts to Twitter.
As stocks showed possible signs of a recovery after Monday's dive, the president predicted he could produce a trade deal with China “tomorrow” but that it will happen “when the time is right.
”Though he asserted a deal to end yearlong impasse would happen “much faster than people think,” the president also sought to reassure farmers who will likely bear the brunt of China’s retaliatory tariffs announced Monday, and urged manufacturers to move their production to the U.S., a potential signal that he is prepared for a more drawn-out battle with Beijing.
Despite China's direct targeting of the U.S. agriculture industry with its retaliatory tariffs, the president predicted that “our great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now.”
“Hopefully China will do us the honor of continuing to buy our great farm product, the best, but if not your Country will be making up the difference based on a very high China buy,” he vowed.
The latest escalation between the two countries, which comes after China reportedly backed out of a nearly completed deal that negotiators were unable to salvage last week, has put the U.S. in “much better position now than any deal we could have made,” Trump said Tuesday. In addition, the president asserted that because of his hardened stance, “other countries are already negotiating with us because they don’t want this to happen to them,” though he did not elaborate on that claim or say which nations had come to the negotiating table.
Trump pressured Chinese President Xi Jinping to strike a deal, lamenting the “tremendous ground” he said the U.S. had lost since the formation of the World Trade Organization, the international trade body Trump blasted as “ridiculous” and “one sided” after Beijing looked to the organization to rein in his barrage of tariffs.
Beijing on Tuesday asked the WTO to intervene in its trade dispute with Washington, proposing new rules that would subject its tariffs to a "multilateral review" and allow member countries to retaliate even when the tariffs had been imposed under a “national security exception,” as Trump has done.
China said the Trump administration’s trade moves had "disturbed the international trade order and international market, impeded normal technological exchanges and applications, impaired the interests of members concerned and undermined the relevant rules of the WTO.”
Trump on Tuesday had flattering words for Xi, but cautioned that he was not prepared to settle in trade negotiations.
“My respect and friendship with President Xi is unlimited but, as I have told him many times before, this must be a great deal for the United States or it just doesn’t make any sense,” he argued. “We have to be allowed to make up some of the tremendous ground we have lost to China on Trade since the ridiculous one sided formation of the WTO.”
In a separate tweet, the president reiterated his belief that the U.S. was coming to the table from a position of strength, claiming that “we are now a much bigger economy than China," even though the U.S. has long had a larger economy than China, "and have substantially increased in size since the great 2016 Election.”
“We are the 'piggy bank' that everyone wants to raid and take advantage of. NO MORE!” Trump added.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine