You're coming! Trump threatens China with immediate tariffs if Xi Jinping does not attend G20

In a telephone interview broadcast on CNBC Trump said that additional tariffs on Chinese goods will go into effect immediately if China’s President Xi Jinping does not attend the upcoming G20 meeting.

Trump defended his threats to slap tariffs on Mexico and China, which he said put the US “at a tremendous competitive advantage.”
 

"Had a Democrat gotten in... China would have caught us by the end of her term. They're nowhere close, they'll never catch us," Trump said China has "lost many many trillions of dollars" since he was elected president. https://t.co/owyepKx0hK pic.twitter.com/fMBmH2CrMd

— CNBC (@CNBC) June 10, 2019

“The China deal is going to work out. You know why? Because of tariffs … Right now, China is getting absolutely decimated by companies that are leaving China, going to other countries, including our own, because they don’t want to pay the tariffs.”

China is “going to make a deal because they’re going to have to make a deal,” Trump said.

“They devalue their currency, they have for years: It’s put them at a tremendous competitive advantage. And we don’t have that advantage because we have a Fed that doesn’t lower interest rates,” Trump told CNBC. “We should be entitled to have a fair playing field, but even without a fair playing field — because our Fed is very, very disruptive to us — even without a fair playing field we are winning.”The president criticized the US Federal Reserve for raising interest rates too quickly and giving the Chinese an upper hand in trade negotiations.

Trump says President Xi runs China’s central bank: "He can do whatever he wants." https://t.co/rsyc6X7gYe

— CNBC (@CNBC) June 10, 2019

The US president added: “Don’t forget: the head of the Fed in China is President Xi ... he can do whatever he wants.”

When asked if he viewed Chinese telecom giant Huawei as a national security threat or leverage in trade negotiations with China, Trump said it could be both.

“I do see it as a threat,” he said about Huawei. “At the same time, it could be very well that we do something with respect to Huawei as part of our trade negotiations with China.”