Washington: Donald Trump said his trade war with China has hurt the performance of the US stock market, but that he had to confront the country’s economic practices.
“Let me tell you, if I wanted to do nothing with China, our stock market, our stock market would be 10,000 points higher than it is right now but somebody had to do this,” the president told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “It was out of control and they were out of control.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 26,332 as of about 1:00pm in Washington, up less than 1 per cent for the day. Trump increased tariffs on Chinese imports this week to try to elbow Beijing into resuming talks on a far-reaching trade deal.
“We’ll see what happens, if they want to make a deal, they’ll make a deal, if they don’t want to make a deal, that’s fine,” he said.
He declined to say whether Chinese negotiators will visit Washington this month.
