Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump today said that if China does not play a fair game, the US should start taxing the Chinese products coming into the US.
"As far as trade is concerned, if China doesn't play fairly, which they're not playing, and they haven't for many years because they beat us with devaluation, with nothing else. If China doesn't play fairly, we should tax their product -- coming in," Trump was quoted as saying by the Fox news.
Trump, 69, said this tax on Chinese product could be as high as 45 per cent.
"Now, they're going for more. I don't know if you know it, but they have the largest devaluation in their history about three months ago. And, by the way, that devaluation, largest in two decades. Now, I hear they want to devalue again. And, all it means is businesses are going to be unable to compete with China," the New York based real estate tycoon said.
"I don't think you'd ever have to impose it because when this happened, China would start behaving very rapidly, so, I don't think it would ever happen," he said.
"If it did happen, our country would take in a lot, and it wouldn't necessarily be 45 per cent, it could be a lot less than that, but, our country would take a lot of money in. If you look at our trade deficit with China, have you taken a look at that lately? We're talking about USD 400 to USD500 billion dollars a year," he said.
Trump said that they are losing USD 400 to USD 500 billion dollars, in terms of a trade deficit with China.
"So, we have to shake it up. We have to get our great business people to negotiate for us because we have people negotiating our deals with China, with Japan, with Mexico, with all of these countries that our eating our lunch," he said.
Asserting that China has full control over North Korea, Trump said Beijing should solve the problem of Pyongyang.
"China should be solving North Korea, they have total power. They say they we don't have as much. They're doing that to taunt us. They have total power over North Korea," he said.
"I say we can beat them so badly, we have such power over China with trade because we have rebuilt China. They have taken so much out of our economy in terms of money that we have a lot power over China. They should solve the North Korea problem," Trump said.
Trump said he would be the greatest jobs president.
