Trump, Xi will ‘likely’ talk this week: White House

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping will likely hold a long-awaited call later this week, the White House said Monday, as trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies ratchet back up.

Trump reignited strains with China last week when he accused the world’s second-biggest economy of violating a deal that had led both countries to temporarily reduce huge tit-for-tat tariffs.

“The two leaders will likely talk this week,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters outside the West Wing when asked whether Trump and Xi would speak. Trump and Xi have yet to have any confirmed contact more than five months since the Republican returned to power, despite frequent claims by the US president that a call is imminent.

Trump even said in a Time Magazine interview in April that Xi had called him -- but Beijing insisted that there had been no call recently. Stock markets around the world mostly slid on Monday as the US-China tensions resurfaced.

Trump in early April introduced sweeping worldwide tariffs that targeted China most heavily of all, accusing other countries of “ripping off” the United States and running trade imbalances. Beijing and Washington last month agreed to slash staggeringly high tariffs on each other for 90 days after talks between top officials in Geneva.

But Trump and top US officials Washington officials last week accused China of violating the deal, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying Beijing was “slow-rolling” the agreement in comments to Fox News Sunday. Beijing rejected those “bogus” US claims on Monday, and accused Washington of introducing “a number of discriminatory restrictive measures.”

Trump has separately ramped up tensions with other trade partners, including the European Union, by vowing to double global tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50 percent from Wednesday.