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🚨 POLL: Does Trump Deserve 4 More Years?
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🚨 POLL: Does Trump Deserve 4 More Years?
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In an interview with Reuters, Trump said that he believes China’s handling of the coronavirus is proof that Beijing “will do anything they can” to make him lose the election this coming November.
Trump said he was looking at different option in terms of consequences for Beijing, adding, “I can do a lot,” according to Reuters.
“China will do anything they can to have me lose this race,” said Trump. He said he believes Beijing wants his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, to win the race to ease the pressure Trump has placed on China over trade and other issues.
When asked if Trump would consider the use of tariffs or debt write-offs for China, Trump simply said, “There are many things I can do,” he said. “We’re looking for what happened.”
“They’re constantly using public relations to try to make it like they’re innocent parties,” he said of Chinese officials.
“We can make a deal. They want to make a deal,” Trump said. “They’ve agreed to pay a lot of money. They’re paying a lot more money than they did when I got here” in January 2017.
“We were rocking before this happened. We had the greatest economy in history,” he said.
Trump also spoke about accelerating the timetable on the development of a possible vaccine.
“I think things are moving along very nicely,” he said.
More from Reuters:
Trump has been heaping blame on China for a global pandemic that has killed at least 60,000 people in the United States according to a Reuters tally, and thrown the U.S. economy into a deep recession, putting in jeopardy his hopes for another four-year term.
The Republican president, often accused of not acting early enough to prepare the United States for the spread of the virus, said he believed China should have been more active in letting the world know about the coronavirus much sooner.
He said the trade deal that he concluded with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at reducing chronic U.S. trade deficits with China had been “upset very badly” by the economic fallout from the virus.
A senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that an informal “truce” in the war of words that Trump and Xi essentially agreed to in a phone call in late March now appeared to be over.
The two leaders had promised that their governments would do everything possible to cooperate to contain the coronavirus. In recent days, Washington and Beijing have traded increasingly bitter recriminations over the origin of the virus and the response to it.
However, Trump and his top aides, while stepping up their anti-China rhetoric, have stopped short of directly criticizing Xi, who the U.S. president has repeatedly called his “friend.”
Trump also said South Korea has agreed to pay the United States more money for a defense cooperation agreement but would not be drawn out on how much.
