President Donald Trump said Monday that trade talks with China, which had stalled out in May, have “already begun” following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit over the weekend.
The renewed talks were being held by phone, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. The president added that any deal between the two economic superpowers would need to lean in the U.S.′ favor.
“They’re speaking very much on the phone but they’re also meeting. Yeah, it’s essentially already begun,” Trump said. “It actually began before our meeting.”
“It has to be better for us than for them because they had such a big advantage for so many years,” Trump added.
The president also said that China’s ample trade surplus over the U.S. for years should mean that a potential trade deal with Beijing “has to be a deal that is somewhat tilted to our advantage.”
Trump and Xi had agreed during a bilateral meeting at the summit in Osaka, Japan, to hold off on imposing new tariffs on imports of each other’s goods and to move forward with trade negotiations.
The U.S. has slapped duties on $250 billion in Chinese goods, and has threatened to tariff virtually all other Chinese imports, as well. Beijing has imposed tariffs on $110 billion in U.S. goods.
Negotiations between the U.S. and China collapsed in May after a delegation from Beijing traveled to Washington for high-level talks. Trump claimed that China “broke the deal” that had been near completion by reneging on some stipulations that had been agreed upon.
