President Trump expressed doubt Thursday that high-stakes trade talks with China will succeed because past U.S. administrations have “spoiled” the Chinese with one-sided deals.
“China has become very spoiled,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. “Other countries have become very spoiled because they always got 100 percent of whatever they wanted from the United States. But we can’t allow that to happen any more.”
Asked if the negotiations will be successful, the president said, “I tend to doubt it.”
A high-level Chinese trade delegation held meetings in Washington Thursday with Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin and other top U.S. officials, seeking to resolve an escalating economic feud that has included tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum.
Mr. Trump met in the Oval Office late Thursday with Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He to discuss the simmering trade dispute.
“It means that there’s great interest here in furthering the deal and furthering negotiations and trying to reach some remedies regarding unfair and illegal trading practices,” said White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow.
Ahead of the talks, Mr. Trump surprised some of his own advisers this week by ordering the Commerce Department to rescind sanctions against ZTE, China’s second-largest manufacturer of cellphones. He said he did it in response to a personal request from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“President Xi asked me if I’d take a look at that because it was very harmful to them in terms of their jobs and probably other things,” Mr. Trump said. “I certainly said I would. I like him, he likes me. We have a great relationship.”
Democrats have blasted the move, noting that the Pentagon has issued a ban on ZTE phones due to concerns about cybersecurity. ZTE also paid a civil penalty of $1.19 billion for violating embargoes against sales to Iran and North Korea, then incurred a seven-year ban from the Commerce Department for lying to U.S. officials about punishing its employees.
The president acknowledged that ZTE “did very bad things to our country,” but said the case is just part of overall trade negotiations with Beijing.
“The one thing I will say, they [ZTE] also buy a large portion of their parts for the phones they make … they buy those parts from the United States,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s a lot of business. So we have a lot of companies that won’t be selling those parts. But anything we do with ZTE, it’s just a small component of the overall deal.”
He said his administration was responsible for cracking down on ZTE.
“Don’t forget, it was my administration with my full knowledge that put very, very strong clamps on ZTE,” Mr. Trump said. “It wasn’t anybody else. It wasn’t President Obama. It wasn’t President Bush. It was me.”
The president said the U.S. has been allowing China to get away with “murder” on trade.
“We have been ripped off by China, an evacuation of wealth like no country has ever seen before,” he said. “That’s not going to happen anymore.”
The trade talks are taking place against a backdrop of several massive pending mergers, including Qualcomm’s proposed purchase of NXP Semiconductors. China’s Ministry of Commerce is restarting its review of Qualcomm’s planned takeover, Bloomberg reported this week, after previously suspending the approval process in response to escalating trade tensions with the U.S.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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