New York Post, Tuesday, August 27, 2019nypost.com8
By MARK MOOREPresident Trump on Monday
said he’s confident that China is
sincere about wanting to reopen
talks to end the escalating trade
war between the two countries,
which in recent weeks has sent tar-
iffs soaring and markets plunging.
“I think they want to make a deal
very badly,” Trump said during a
news conference at the G-7 summit
in France alongside French Presi-
dent Emmanuel Macron.
Trump said he was buoyed when
the Chinese vice chairman, Liu He,
late Sunday said that he’d like to
forge an agreement and “wants it
to be under calm conditions.”
“I agree with him on that,”
Trump said, adding that China has
been hit hard by the tariffs and lost
nearly 3 million jobs.
“I think they want very much to
make a deal and the longer they
wait, the harder it is to put it back
— if they can be put back at all. So I
believe they want to do a deal,” he
said.
He went on to praise Chinese
President Xi Jinping as a “great
leader” and a “brilliant man” who
can’t afford to lose 3 million jobs or
more and survive the negative ef-fects a trade war will have on the
Chinese economy.
“I’m not sure they have a choice.
And I don’t say that as a threat. I
don’t think they have a choice,”
Trump said.
Earlier Monday, Trump said Chi-
nese officials reached out to mem-
bers of his administration to say
they want to restart talks.
“China called last night our top
trade people and said, ‘Let’s get back
to the table,’ so we’ll be getting back
to the table, and I think they want to
do something,” he said.
But Hu Xjin, the editor of Global
Times, the Communist Party
newspaper, said he wasn’t aware of
any phone calls between Beijing
and Washington.
“The two sides have been keep-
ing contact at technical level, it
doesn’t have significance that Pres-
ident Trump suggested. China
didn’t change its position. China
won’t cave to US pressure,” he
wrote on Twitter.
On Friday, after China and the
US announced they would in-
crease tariffs on each others’
goods, the Dow Jones plunged
more than 600 points. But on Mon-
day, the Dow regained nearly 270
points. With WiresDon: Tariff-tired
Beijing ‘wants
to make a deal’
Awkward interaction — part deux.
President Trump looked as if he was getting an
embrace from his least-favorite aunt as he was
hugged (above) by French President Emmanuel
Macron after their joint press conference at the
end of the G-7 Summit in France on Monday.
Trump appeared to be holding his breath,
barely mustering a pat on the back for Macron.
The stiff moment came two years after their first
meeting in Brussels, when they shared an ex-
tended, white-knuckled handshake, which they
seemed deterimined to repeat (top left and left).EPA (1), Getty Images (2)