Trump hints tariffs on China nearing end, says he's reluctant to keep raising them

U.S. president Donald Trump expressed his reluctance to continue upping tariff rates and signalled a potential end to the hikes between the U.S. and China.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Apr. 17: "I don't want them to go higher because at a certain point you make it where people don't buy,"

"So, I may not want to go higher or I may not want to even go up to that level. I may want to go to less because you know you want people to buy and, at a certain point, people aren't gonna buy," he continued, according to Reuters.

He also suggested he might be open to lowering them, according to Bloomberg.

His comments came slightly more than two weeks after sharply higher across-the-board tariffs on many countries introduced on Apr. 2 caused markets to react violently.

Trump says China in touch

Trump said China had been in touch since the imposition of tariffs and that he felt a deal could be reached.

He also insisted that Beijing had repeatedly reached out in a bid to broker a deal, Bloomberg reported.

However, Trump repeatedly declined to specify if talks with China included any with China president Xi Jinping.

Reuters reported that it understood that high-level exchanges have been absent.

Trump praised Xi

“I have a very good relationship with President Xi, and I think it’s going to continue. And I would say they have reached out a number of times,” Trump said, as per Bloomberg.

Asked if it was Xi or Chinese officials who had directly contacted him, Trump replied: “Well, the same. I view it very similar. It would be top levels of China.”

“If you knew him,” Trump added, referring to Xi, “you would know that if they reached out, he knew exactly. He knew everything about it, he runs it very tight, very strong, very smart”.

The White House has said China should reach out first.

However, according to people familiar with Chinese thinking, Beijing was reportedly not clear about the U.S. demands.

Trump also expressed confidence about a deal that would include trade concessions and the sale of TikTok’s U.S. assets.

He has repeatedly extended a legal deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of the short video app with 170 million American users.

Background

A 10 per cent tariff was slapped on most goods entering the country on Apr. 2, but the implementation of higher levies got delayed to make way for negotiations.

Levies on Chinese goods imported into the U.S. were hiked to 145 per cent ultimately.

Top photo via White House