President Donald Trump said the trade deal with China means “much less to me” because of what he called China’s role in the spread of the coronavirus.
The president, in a briefing on the White House coronavirus on Thursday night, again complained that the United States had to shut down its economy to protect itself against the virus.
“The trade deal means less to me now than when I did,” Trump said.
Trump has tried to blame China for the outbreak, as polls show growing numbers of voters disapprove of his handling of the pandemic.
The President has taken a series of measures aimed at punishing the Beijing government for the virus and other problems, including his efforts to reduce political freedoms in Hong Kong and the arrest of approximately 1 million minority Muslims.
Trump ordered the end of Hong Kong’s special status after determining that a new Chinese national security law meant that the former British colony was no longer autonomous. He also signed a law authorizing sanctions against officials responsible for cracking down on political dissent in the city, weeks after he signed a similar law aimed at those involved in the crackdown on Uighur Muslims.
And this week, in one of the biggest threats to diplomatic ties between countries in decades, the United States gave China three days to close its consulate in Houston, the fourth largest city in the United States.
The State Department said it had ordered the shutdown “to protect American intellectual property and the private information of Americans,” without elaborating. China has promised to retaliate.
The United States Department of Justice has also stepped up crackdown on Chinese hackers and investigators. On Tuesday, the department accused two men of working with the Chinese government to target companies that develop coronavirus vaccines and steal hundreds of millions of dollars in intellectual property and trade secrets from companies around the world.
However, the president has signaled to attendees that he does not want to further escalate tensions with Beijing, and has so far ruled out additional sanctions on other top Chinese officials, according to people familiar with the matter.
Inflating the conflict with China could create new headwinds for the US economy, which has already been hit by the pandemic, and possibly nullify the trade deal Trump brokered with Chinese President Xi Jingping.
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