On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said a U.S.-China trade war was “on hold” while they continued to negotiate trade “framework.”
Mnuchin said “We are putting the trade war on hold. So right now we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold while we try to execute the framework.”
He added, “The president has been very clear since the first meeting with President Xi in Mar-a-Lago that we are going to reduce the trade deficit. We have an agreement with China that they will substantially agree to it. I would just comment that ultimately these are not government to government transactions. It’s not a giant purchase order with us. We are immediately going to follow this up with Secretary Ross going there with very hard commitments in agriculture where we expect to see a very big increase. 35-45% increases in agriculture this year alone. In energy, doubling the energy purchases. I think that you could see 50, $60 billion a year of energy purchases over the next 3-5 years. And strategically that’s very important for us and very important for them.”
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