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WASHINGTON, Reuters – United States President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (April 29) that he believes China’s handling of the coronavirus is proof that Beijing “will do everything it can” to make it lose its candidacy. to re-election in November.
In an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office, Trump said he was looking for different options in terms of consequences for China from the virus. “I can do a lot,” he said.
Trump has been blaming China for a global pandemic that has killed at least 60,000 people in the United States according to a Reuters count, and has pushed the US economy into a deep recession, jeopardizing his hopes for another four-period years.
The Republican president, often accused of failing to act early enough to prepare the United States for the spread of the virus, said he believed China should have been more active in informing the world about the coronavirus much earlier.
When asked if he was considering the use of tariffs or even debt cancellations for China, Trump did not offer details. “There are many things that I can do,” he said. “We are looking for what happened.”
“China will do everything possible to lose this race,” added Trump.
He said he believes Beijing wants his Democratic opponent Joe Biden to win the race to ease pressure Trump has brought to China on trade and other issues.
“They constantly use public relations to try to make them look innocent,” he said of Chinese officials.
He said the trade deal he signed with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with the aim of reducing the United States’ chronic trade deficits with China, had been “very upset” by the economic consequences of the virus.
A senior Trump administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that an informal “truce” in the war of words that Trump and Xi essentially accepted in a phone call in late March appeared to have ended.
The two leaders had promised that their governments would do everything possible to cooperate to contain the coronavirus. In recent days, Washington and Beijing have exchanged increasingly bitter recriminations about the origin of the virus and the response to it.
However, Trump and his top aides, in intensifying their rhetoric against China, have not directly criticized Xi, whom the President of the United States has repeatedly called his “friend.”
Trump also said that South Korea agreed to pay the United States more money for a defense cooperation agreement, but that it would not be deducted how much.
“We can make a deal. They want to make a deal,” said Trump.
“They have agreed to pay a lot of money. They pay a lot more money than when I got here” in January 2017.
The United States has approximately 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, rather than a peace treaty.
Trump is leading a ranking effort to try to keep the United States economy afloat through stimulus payments to individuals and businesses, while pushing state governors to carefully reopen their states as new infections decline.
He said he is happy with the way many governors are operating under the strain of the virus, but said some need to improve. He did not want to name names.
Trump’s handling of the virus has come under scrutiny. 43 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, according to the Reuters / Ipsos poll from April 27 to 28.
But the president received good news when Gilead Sciences Inc said the experimental remdesivir of antiviral drugs was showing progress in treating victims of the virus.
Trump has also sought an accelerated schedule for the development of a vaccine. “I think things are moving very well,” he said.
At the end of the half-hour interview, Trump offered lighthearted comments on a recently released Navy video that allegedly shows an unidentified flying object. “I wonder if it’s real,” he said. “That is a great video.”
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