U.S. President Donald Trump said his administration is in talks with China on a tariff deal and claimed Chinese President Xi Jinping called him, Time magazine reported, though Beijing has challenged this account of the discussions.
The Republican president, in an interview with the magazine on Tuesday that was published on Friday, did not say when Xi called or what the two leaders discussed. Trump said he would not call Xi.
“He’s called. And I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf,” Trump said.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s statement. Before Trump’s latest remarks were published, it had urged Washington to stop “misleading the public” on bilateral tariff negotiations, a comment reiterated by Beijing’s embassy in Washington.
‘Total Victory’
Trump in the interview said he has made 200 tariff deals and expected to finish negotiations in about three or four weeks, likening the United States to a department store where he sets the price. He gave no details of any such deals.
Asked if he would consider it a win if the U.S. still had tariffs as high as 50% in a year, he told Time: “Total victory.”
“We’re meeting with China. We’re doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I’ve made all the deals,” Trump said.
“The deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it,” he added.
Crimea To Russia
Trump also laid out his plans to make various other deals with world leaders from Russia’s war in Ukraine to the Middle East with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Trump, who took office on January 20 and had vowed during his campaign to end the war in Ukraine on his first day, wants a quick end to the fighting and told reporters on Thursday that he thinks they are close to a deal. He also said he had his own deadline, which he did not detail.
His administration has offered a proposal in recent days as U.S. officials met with Europeans and Ukrainians. His special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Friday.
In his comments published on Friday, Trump told Time that Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, would remain in Moscow’s hands.
“Crimea will stay with Russia. And (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskiy understands that, and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time. It’s been with them long before Trump came along,” he said.
Middle East
In the Middle East, Trump predicted that Saudi Arabia will enter the Abraham Accords, the series of normalization agreements Trump’s administration negotiated between Israel and some Gulf countries during his first term.
“I think Saudi Arabia will go into the Abraham Accords,” he said. “That will happen.”
He added that he thinks the U.S. will make a deal with Iran. Asked whether he was open to meeting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei or President Masoud Pezeshkian, Trump replied: “Sure.”
Trump has said he will visit Saudi Arabia and the region next month.
Lawsuits At Home
Trump, who promised on the campaign trail to use his term in office as “retribution,” also defended his use of presidential power domestically in targeting law firms, foreign students and former U.S. officials.
“I’ve gotta be doing something right, because I’ve had a lot of law firms give me a lot of money,” he told Time.
He defended the revocation of student visas, saying “they can protest, but they can’t destroy the schools like they did with Columbia and others”.
Asked if he would direct the U.S. Department of Justice to disclose any evidence it had tying a Tufts University student who was arrested to militant group Hamas, Trump said he was not aware of the particular case but would look into it.
Turkish national Rumeysa Öztürk has said U.S. immigration authorities unlawfully arrested her based on her pro-Palestinian advocacy, including co-authoring an opinion piece in Tufts’ student newspaper.
Trump also defended his targeting in a recent order of Christopher Krebs, who he fired as head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2020 during his first term in office.
(With inputs from Reuters)
