Trump says China “will do everything it can” to lose reelection race

READ: White House Business Advisor Navarro lashes out at China over ‘fake’ COVID-19 test kits

Trump has been blaming China for a global pandemic that has killed at least 60,000 people in the United States and has pushed the American economy into a deep recession, jeopardizing his hopes for another four-year term.

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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 in its power to lose this race,” Trump said.

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, aimed at reducing America’s chronic trade deficits with China, was seen “very bad” 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.”

READ: Trump casts doubt on China’s coronavirus numbers

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,” Trump said. “They have agreed to pay a lot of money. They are paying 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 said its 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.

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