« We have been ripped off by China for a long time. »
Does anyone ever win a trade war? No, but there are degrees of losing one, and Donald Trump wants to make sure China loses worse than we do. In an interview with CNBC this morning, Trump notes that he could have a great stock-market boom if he simply ignored the trade deficits and cheating conducted by Beijing as his predecessors did, but he wants to fix this problem rather than kicking it down the road.
How will he fix it? By slapping tariffs on every good and service imported from China if need be — all $505 billion of them:
Trump weighs in on the trade war with China from CNBC .
President Donald Trump has indicated that he is willing to slap tariffs on every Chinese good imported to the U. S. should the need arise.
“I’m ready to go to 500,” the president told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in a “Squawk Box” interview.…
By sheer dollar volume, the Chinese won’t be able to come close to the U. S. in a tit-for-tat battle. Trump’s comments point to a willingness to push the envelope as far as the U. S. needs to get Chinese tariff concessions, along with a pledge to stop stealing American technology.
“I’m not doing this for politics, I’m doing this to do the right thing for our country,” Trump said. “We have been ripped off by China for a long time.”
Trump’s comments on the stock market were predictably prescient. Traders around the world pulled back at Trump’s threat:
World stock markets fell sharply Friday after U. S. President Donald Trump said he was prepared to put new tariffs on all Chinese imports, escalating the rhetoric in a trade war that could hit global economic growth.
KEEPING SCORE: From being up slightly earlier in the day, European indexes were trading lower. Germany’s DAX fell 0.5 percent to 12,622 while France’s CAC 40 dropped 0.7 percent at 5,377. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.3 percent to 7,661. U. S. indexes were poised to open lower, with S&P 500 futures down 0.
