US President Donald Trump has ruled out renegotiating the trade deal with China and expressed disappointment over Beijing's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has spread across the world killing nearly 3,00,000 people, including over 80,000 in America.
The US and China in the beginning of the year signed Phase-1 of a trade deal, ending a bitter two-year tariff war that had rattled the global economy.
"The Chinese said somewhere that they would like to renegotiate the (trade) deal. We are not going to renegotiate," Trump told Fox Business News on Thursday.
"Look, I'm not happy about anything having to do with that particular subject (China) right now. Everything I said turned out to be right. You look at other countries they charge us tariffs to do business and we are not allowed to charge them," he said.
Responding to a question, Trump said the Chinese have always stolen Intellectual Property (IP) from the US. "They were never called (out). Now they are being called out," he said.
"We can stop them, they are going to try doing it. I mean you could also stop doing business with them, that is one thing. Look, we have lost a fortune dealing with China. We have rebuilt China," he said.
"They have done a great job but the people sitting in this seat (The Oval Office) have allowed them to rip us off like you've never seen before and that includes President (Barack) Obama and (Joe) Biden 'sleepy Joe'. He allowed them to rip this country off. We spent hundreds of billions, we gave them hundreds of billions of dollars year-in and year-out," Trump said.
The president said he does not want to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping right now. "I have a very good relationship, but I just -- right now I don't want to speak to him," he said.
There are many things that the United States can do, he asserted.
"There are many things we could do. We could do things, we could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did what would happen? You would save USD 500 billion, if you cut off the whole relationship. Look, at what point does -- and I said this for years I said it with other countries also you know -- China is not the only country ripping us off at the NATO where we defend Europe for nothing by the way essentially nothing I was able to get them to pay hundreds of billions of dollars more," he said.
The coronavirus, which first emerged in China's Wuhan city in December last, has killed over 3,00,000 people with 4.3 million confirmed cases across the world. More than a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases are from the US.
There has been increasing pressure on the President Trump, in the last several weeks, to take action against China as lawmakers and opinion-makers feel that the COVID-19 spread across the world from Wuhan because of Chinese inaction.
Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have claimed that the deadly virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The United States has repeatedly asked China to allow the international community to go into the laboratory in Wuhan for investigation.
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