U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to admit there were likely challenges ahead for his trade deal with China.
He says the magnitude of the coronavirus pandemic will far outweigh any positive effect the agreement may provide to the U.S.
Politico says many analysts don’t expect China to meet the purchase target of $77 billion more in U.S. goods and services this year, compared to the 2017 baseline levels.
“As I’ve said for a long time, dealing with China is a very expensive thing to do,” the president wrote on Twitter. “We had just made a great trade deal, the ink was barely dry, and the world was hit by a plague from China. 100 trade deals wouldn’t make up the difference – and all those innocent lives lost.”
Still, there’s no early indicator that the president intends to pull out of the U.S.-China deal that was signed on January 15th or punish the Asian nation for falling short on implementation, such as imposing more tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S.