U.S. President Donald Trump said his
conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week was friendly and he
thought he could reach a trade deal with China.
The leaders of the world's two biggest economies
discussed issues including TikTok, trade and Taiwan in a phone call before
Trump took office on Monday.
Since taking office,
Trump has spoken about a 10% punitive duty on Chinese imports because he says
fentanyl is being sent from China to the U.S. via Mexico and Canada. However, he did not immediately impose
tariffs as he had promised during his election campaign. Trump has also
threatened tariffs against the European Union, Mexico and Canada.
"It went fine. It
was a good, friendly conversation," Trump said of his call with Xi in an
interview with Fox News aired on Thursday evening. "I can do that," Trump said in the interview when asked if he
could make a deal with China over fair trade practices.
Trump said he would
rather not use tariffs against China but called tariffs a "tremendous
power."
"But we have one very big power over China,
and that's tariffs, and they don't want them, and I'd rather not have to use
it, but it's a tremendous power over China," Trump added.
The U.S. and China are
embroiled in an array of diplomatic and economic disagreements, including an
accelerating technological and military rivalry, bitter trade disputes and
Washington's concerns with the ownership of famous social media app TikTok,
whose parent company is Chinese firm ByteDance.