President Donald Trump firmly declared Wednesday that he will not relax the 145% tariffs placed on most Chinese imports as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with Beijing.
Trump was speaking to reporters after introducing former Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., as his nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to China.
A reporter asked the president, “China says in order to have substantive negotiations, you have to bring down your 145% tariffs. Are you open to pulling back your tariffs in order to get China to the negotiating table?”
“No,” Trump said before taking another question.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s top trade official, He Lifeng, are scheduled to meet Saturday in Switzerland in the nations’ first formal trade negotiations since Trump hiked tariffs to 145% last month on one of the largest trading partners of the U.S.
Trump issued an executive order in February in which he slapped 10% tariffs on China for subsidizing companies to export fentanyl and precursor chemicals and harboring criminal organizations that launder revenue from the opioid trade. He doubled that to 20% in March and smacked an additional 125% reciprocal tariffs on most Chinese imports last month after China boosted levies on U.S. imports to 84%.
Trump told reporters that a “very big part” of the trade negotiations will involve China addressing the fentanyl issue.
“Well, they have to stop fentanyl from coming in,” Trump said. “That will be a very big part. And I had that understanding with President XI [Jinping] before I left last time, and we had a deal, and he would have honored the deal. But when [Joe] Biden came in, of course, nothing ever happened with him. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but that would have saved a lot of lives. That [2020] election cost us a lot of lives and a lot of heartache.”
China’s state-run Global Times reported Wednesday that the U.S. initiated the trade talks, which appeared to irritate Trump when a reporter asked him about the claim.
“They said we initiated it?” he said. “Well, I think they ought to go back and study their files.”
Bessent and Jamieson Greer, U.S. trade representative, will be part of the talks Saturday in Geneva, where they also will meet with Switzerland President Karin Keller-Sutter to discuss negotiations over reciprocal trade, according to a Treasury Department news release.
“At President Trump’s direction, I am negotiating with countries to rebalance our trade relations to achieve reciprocity, open new markets, and protect America’s economic and national security,” Greer said in a statement. “I look forward to having productive meetings with some of my counterparts as well as visiting with my team in Geneva who all work diligently to advance U.S. interests on a range of multilateral issues.”