I don’t want to talk to Xi, says Donald Trump

Donald Trump has vented his frustration with China and its role in the globalised economy.

Donald Trump with Xi Jinping in June 2019. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has vented his frustration with China and its role in the globalised economy as divis­ions in the US about how best to confront COVID-19 widen.

The US President said on Thursday (Friday AEST) that international supply chains that shipped goods and parts around the world were “stupid” and that for the time being he was not interested in speaking to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Before the pandemic reached the US, the surging economy under Mr Trump’s presidency was expected to be at the heart of his campaign to be re-elected in ­November. Now, with government economists forecasting the deepest productivity slump and highest budget deficit since the 1940s, Mr Trump has returned to the America First rhetoric that swept him into the White House almost four years ago.

“These stupid supply chains that are all over the world — we have a supply chain where they’re made in all different parts of the world,” he said in an interview with Fox Business. “One little piece of the world goes bad and the whole thing is messed up. We should have them all in the US.”

He was “very disappointed in China” because “they should never have let this happen”. ­Although he has often stressed the warmth of his relationship with Mr Xi, Mr Trump said “just right now I don’t want to speak to him”.

Relations between the world’s two most powerful countries were strained before the virus, with Washington and Beijing clashing on trade and competing for geopolitical influence. However, the events of recent months have marked “the beginnings of a Cold War”, said Orville Schell, director of the Centre on US-China Relations at the Asia Society.

On Wednesday, the FBI and the Department of Homeland ­Security accused Beijing of trying to steal the work of American ­researchers developing vaccines for coronavirus through cyber ­attacks that would jeopardise “the delivery of secure, effective and ­efficient treatment options”.

Mr Trump’s remarks on trade came as US government figures showed that almost three million people made new unemployment claims last week, driving the total over eight weeks to more than 36 million. The Bureau of Labour Statistics has acknowledged this is the worst mark since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Meanwhile, a gulf is widening on how to balance the risks of spreading coronavirus with the need to resuscitate the economy. A Politico/Morning Con­sult survey this week found 72 per cent of Democrats were more worried about health than the economy. Fifty-five per cent of Republicans took the opposite view.

The national picture is com­plicate­d by divergent approaches taken by different states. The Democratic governors of California and New York have been two of the most prominent propon­ents of a strict initial lockdown followed by cautious reopening. The Republican governors of Florida, Texas and Arizona are pushing for looser restrictions.

Democratic governors in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Louisiana are facing attempts through legislation or private legal actions to force them to open their states more quickly.

Speaking in Pennsylvania, the President pondered whether corona­virus testing was “frankly overrated”, shortly before declaring: “We have the greatest testing in the world.” He said the reason the US had such a large number of confirmed cases was that it had expande­d testing. “If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases,” he said.

THE TIMES