“The ball is in China’s court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don’t have to make a deal with them,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday, reading what she said was a statement Trump dictated.
“There’s no difference between China and any other country except they are much larger, and China wants what we have, what every country wants, what we have – the American consumer – or to put another way, they need our money,” the statement continued.
China ordered airlines not to take further deliveries of Boeing jets, according to people familiar with the matter. It marked Beijing’s latest move to retaliate against Trump’s decision to hike levies to as high as 145 per cent on Chinese goods.
The US president criticised China in a social media post earlier on Tuesday, saying it “just reneged on the big Boeing deal” signed during his first administration.