President Donald Trump of the United States on Thursday signaled a potential end to the tit-for-tat tariff hikes between the US and China that shocked markets.
Speaking with reporters about tariffs at the White House, Trump stated that a deal over the fate of social media platform TikTok may have to wait.
“I don’t want them to go higher because at a certain point you make it where people don’t buy. So, I may not want to go higher or I may not want to even go up to that level. I may want to go to less because you know you want people to buy and, at a certain point, people aren’t gonna buy,” he said.
The US president’s comments further pointed to a diminished appetite for sharply higher across-the-board tariffs on dozens of countries after markets reacted violently to their introduction on April 2.
Recall that he slapped 10% tariffs on most goods entering the country but delayed the implementation of higher levies, pending negotiations.
The Republican still increased rates on Chinese imports, now totaling 145%, after Beijing retaliated with its own counter-measures.
China said last week that it will not respond to a numbers game with tariffs, its own signal that across-the-board rates would not rise further.
According to Trump, China had been in touch since the imposition of tariffs and expressed optimism that they could reach a deal.
Trump, while speaking with reporters, repeatedly declined to specify the nature of talks between the countries or whether they directly included Chinese President Xi Jinping.
He has also repeatedly extended a legal deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the US assets of the short video app used by 170 million Americans.
He said on Thursday that a spin-off deal would likely wait until the trade issue is settled.
“We have a deal for TikTok, but it’ll be subject to China so we’ll just delay the deal ’til this thing works out one way or the other,” Trump added.
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