Xi Jinping, China's president, left, gestures while standing next to U.S. President Donald Trump during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Bloomberg: Trump Says He Doesn’t Want to Talk to Xi as China Tensions Rise
* President muses about severing trade ties with China
* Trump says U.S. is looking at Chinese companies on exchanges
President Donald Trump said he doesn’t want to talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping right now and mused about eliminating the largest trading relationship in the world, with tensions high over the coronavirus outbreak.
Asked in a Fox Business Network interview whether he had spoken to Xi recently, Trump said that they have “a very good relationship” but “right now, I don’t want to speak to him. I don’t want to speak to him.”
Unprompted, he said that “we could cut off the whole relationship. If we did, what would happen? You’d save $500 billion,” an inaccurate reference to the volume of trade between the countries.
Trump has sought to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic as public confidence in his handling of the U.S. outbreak has sunk. There have been more than 1.3 million cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. and at least 82,900 deaths, the most in the world. China has reported only about 4,600 deaths from the disease.
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WNU Editor: President Trump is voicing what I am sure many leaders around the world are feeling right now when it comes to President Xi.
