WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th July, 2020) US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he is not interested in talking to China about a Phase Two trade deal.
"I'm not interested right now in talking to China," Trump said in an interview with CBS news. "We made a great trade deal. But as soon as the deal was done, the ink wasn't even dry and they hit us with the plague."
President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed the Phase One deal in January, paving the way for Beijing to buy more than $200 billion worth of US goods and services to make up for huge trade deficits suffered by the United States in the past. The Trump administration has also accused China of stealing US technology and other intellectual piracy, a charge Beijing denies.
While China commenced with buying some US goods and services right after concluding the trade deal, its purchases ground to a virtual halt once the novel coronavirus outbreak hit the world in a bigger way from February.
The fate of the trade deal has also been in question in recent months as Trump repeatedly said he "no longer felt good" about the arrangement, due to his unhappiness with Beijing, which he accused of spreading the novel coronavirus to the United States and the world.
