United States President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that trade talks with China were going “very well”, sounding more positive than on Tuesday when he had said that a trade deal might have to wait until after the 2020 US presidential election.
“Discussions are going very well and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters at a meeting of Nato leaders near London.
His comments on Tuesday, which raised the prospect of a long extension of the trade tensions between the world’s biggest and second-biggest economies, pushed down share prices sharply around the world.
Investors fear that the US-China standoff, which has marked Trump’s presidency since it began in 2017, will add to the slowdown in the global economy.
Earlier, China had warned that US legislation calling for a tougher response to Beijing’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority will affect bilateral cooperation, clouding prospects for a near-term deal to end a trade war.
