In a tweet last week, President Donald Trump mistakenly said China had been asked to reduce its trade imbalance by $1 billion
The Trump administration is pressing China to cut its trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion, a White House spokeswoman said Wednesday, clarifying a tweet last week from President Donald Trump.
Last Wednesday, Trump tweeted that China had been asked to develop a plan to reduce its trade imbalance with the United States by $1 billion, but the spokeswoman said Trump had meant to say $100 billion.
The United States had a record $375 billion trade deficit with China in 2017, which made up two-thirds of a global $566 billion U. S. trade gap last year, according to U. S. Census Bureau data.
China reported its 2017 U. S. trade surplus as $276 billion, also about two-thirds of its reported global surplus of $422.5 billion.
The White House spokeswoman declined to provide details about how the administration would like China to accomplish the surplus-cutting goal — whether increased purchases of U. S. products such as soybeans or aircraft would suffice, or whether it wants China to make major changes to its industrial policies, cut subsidies to state-owned enterprises, or further reduce steel and aluminum capacity.
The request comes as the Trump administration is said to be preparing tariffs on imports of up to $60 billion worth of Chinese information technology, telecoms and consumer products as part of a U. S.
