Trump Calls Threatened High Tariffs on China 'Not Sustainable'

Watch Trump Calls Threatened High Tariffs on China 'Not Sustainable' - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

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00:00President Trump said that high-threatened terrorists with China are not viable

00:03as tensions intensify ahead of an expected meeting with China's Xi Jinping.

00:08Trump spoke in an interview on Fox Business earlier.

00:12It's not sustainable, but that's what the number is.

00:17It's probably not, you know, it could stand, but they forced me to do that.

00:24I think we're going to be fine with China, but we have to have a fair deal.

00:27It's got to be fair.

00:29Let's get more from Bloomberg senior editor Mike Shepard.

00:32And Shep, those comments turned around the entire market.

00:35We were looking at steep losses, and we have climbed back a lot.

00:39Does this mean it is, what, Taco Friday, things aren't as bad as Trump had initially said?

00:45Well, the president really is saying the quiet part out loud here, Danny,

00:48something that economists have been warning about all along,

00:51that there could be severe economic dislocation resulting from a high tariff rate

00:57against Chinese goods, and then retaliation from the Chinese government against American products.

01:03So we do see a signal from the president that, hey, there will be economic pain,

01:08and maybe we don't want to get that close to the stove on this.

01:11At the same time, though, we did hear him in the same interview put the ball back into China's court,

01:17saying, in essence, they forced me to do it.

01:19And he's alluding to the move last week by China to impose those curbs on rare earth mineral exports.

01:26And that is a big deal to U.S. officials.

01:28They had thought that this issue had been resolved in previous rounds of trade talks,

01:32only to see it reopen last week, much to their chagrin.

01:36And there has been some tit for tat even before that between the two sides over shipping

01:41and also over U.S. moves to target subsidiaries of sanctioned companies.

01:46And that would affect real lines of the Chinese economy like Huawei and SMIC.

01:52So this is all pointing ahead to that meeting in 10 days between Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

01:58The president also acknowledged that, look, that meeting still seems to be on track.

02:02But, boy, Danny, they really do have a lot of work to get done ahead of that leader's sit-down.