Calm China Fears
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. President Trump tried to calm fears after announcing an additional 100% tariff on China over its latest trade actions and may still meet with Chinese leaders.
Trump posted on Truth Social that “it will all be fine” with China, and that President Xi “just had a bad moment” in announcing new export controls on rare earth minerals critical for many items. Still …
TRUMP … “That was out of the blue. Out of the blue, they came up with this whole import export concept. And nobody knew anything about it.”
Market strategists were viewing Trump’s “Don’t worry about China” post as another example of Trump’s ‘escalate to de-escalate’ strategy.
But will the tactic pay off, before Trump pulls the tariff ‘trigger?’ …
TRUMP … “We’re gonna have to see what happens. That’s why I made it November 1st. We’ll see what happens here.”
The president also left open the possibility he’ll still meet with China’s Xi Jinping at the upcoming APEC Summit in South Korea after earlier threatening to cancel talks on soybeans and mord …
TRUMP … “I don’t know that we’re going to have it, but I’m going to be there, regardless, so I would assume we might have it.”
Last week, Trump said he’d press Xi to restart U.S. soybean buys and end tariff retaliation against U.S. growers.
But the latest spat set off alarms here. Still, Trump claims the US didn’t start it …
TRUMP … “And we were just surprised at China. I have a very good relationship with President Xi, and they did that. This is not something that I instigated. This was just a response to something that they did.”
China insisted it didn’t want a tariff war but wasn’t afraid of one, and export controls were its sovereign right.
