BEIJING: China’s foreign minister has hit out at the “extreme selfishness” of tariffs, hinting at the steep levies imposed on Beijing by US President Donald Trump.
“Certain countries” resort to “pressure and coercion, and trigger unjustified trade wars… This extreme selfishness only harms their credibility,” top diplomat Wang Yi told his Uzbek counterpart Bakhtiyor Saidov, according to a ministry statement released on Saturday.
This will “only undermine their credibility”, added Wang, who was speaking on Friday on the sidelines of a foreign ministers’ meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
China and the United States, the world’s two biggest economies, are locked in an escalating tit-for-tat trade battle triggered by Trump’s levies on Chinese goods, which have reached 145 percent on many products.
Beijing has responded with 125 percent tariffs of its own on US goods.
Also on Saturday, China repeated that it had held no talks with the United States on trade issues, despite Trump’s recent claim that he had taken a call from Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
In an interview conducted on April 22 with Time magazine and published Friday, Trump did not say when the call with Xi took place or specify what was discussed.
“He’s called,” Trump said. “And I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf.”
China’s commerce ministry had already denied on Thursday that Beijing and Washington were conducting economic or trade negotiations.
In a statement posted on WeChat Saturday, Beijing’s embassy in the US capital repeated that assertion, saying “there have been no consultations or negotiations between China and the United States on tariff issues, let alone any agreement”.
The statement did not mention Trump or Xi by name or directly reference Trump’s claim of a call, but said remarks by the United States that a dialogue on tariffs was ongoing were “nothing but misleading”.
“This trade war was initiated by the US side,” the statement said.
“If the US truly wants to resolve the issue through dialogue, it must first correct its mistakes, stop threatening and pressuring others, and completely remove all unilateral tariff measures against China.”
Trump, meanwhile, suggested he will announce deals with US trading partners in the next few weeks.
“There’s a number at which they will feel comfortable,” Trump told Time, referring to China. “But you can’t let them make a trillion dollars on us.”
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