President Donald Trump has no existing plans to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping regarding the ongoing trade war, a top White House official said Sunday.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer made the statement during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“Is the Trump administration opening any kind of channel to Beijing right now? Are there any plans for Presidents Trump and Xi to speak?” CBS host Margaret Brennan asked.
“Right now, we don’t have any plans on that,” Greer responded. “This issue is truly at the leaders’ level. Before April 2nd, I had a conversation with my counterpart. Since April 2, we have this at the leader’s level and at some point, as President Trump has pointed out, we expect that we’ll be able to have a conversation with them.”
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Brennan went on to ask whether the White House is seeking to force China to sell some of its roughly $1.5 trillion in assets held in the U.S. Greer said that is “not part of this plan,” however.
“President Trump has a global program to try to reshore American manufacturing and address the trade deficit. It’s a global issue,” Greer said.
“The only reason we’re really in this position right now is because China chose to retaliate. So many other countries affirmatively said they did not want retaliation. We want to negotiate with the Americans. And the Chinese made a different decision. So it’s not a plan to do that. It was a Chinese decision. They have agency here,” he added.
Greer’s comments come one day before Xi is scheduled to embark on a five-day tour to shore up trade relations with partners in southeast Asia on Monday.
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Xi is scheduled to visit Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia. Both Vietnam and Malaysia have major trade relationships with the U.S. and China.
Vietnam was among the many countries who decided not to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs last week, instead reaching out to negotiate a trade agreement.
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