By
Bena Ilyas
March 11th, 2024
China has confirmed President Donald Trump was lying when he said his people at the White House received phone calls from China offering to reopen stalled negotiations to end his trade war.
President Donald Trump is becoming more and more disturbed by the possibility of a U.S. stock slump and is spinning to find victories that he could sell to voters.
Together with his economic team, who are often found in contradiction to one another, Trump is searching for a way to stop market fears from spilling over into next year’s presidential election.
However, it seems they are having a hard time reaching a solution. They have flickered between floating tax cuts to claiming they don’t want tax cuts at all. They have been fighting among themselves over which direction to take. They have opposed each other in public.
Trump insisted it’s all the Federal Reserve’s fault, while his own assistants admitted much of it is because of his trade war with China. Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t want to give up on the tactic, saying it would make him look weak.
If we remember clearly, he said the same thing about the wall around the Mexican borders – that his voters will think he’s weak if he doesn’t get it built soon.
However, there was a small glimpse of optimism regarding the possible ending of the trade war with China when this week he said he received calls from Chinese officials saying they wanted to restart talks. Trump said:
“China called last night our top trade people and said ‘let’s get back to the table’ so we will be getting back to the table and I think they want to do something.”
Even though Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claimed there had been “communication,” Trump’s assistants privately claimed the phone calls Trump described didn’t happen the way he said they did. It seems that everything was a lie – put out only because of the stock slump.
Trump now admits that he made up the late night phone call from China so as to manipulate the stock market higher. Private citizens have actually been prosecuted for doing that for personal financial gain. I guess it's OK for a president to do it for personal political gain.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) August 29, 2019
Instead, allegedly Trump was pretty impatient to show optimism that he thinks it might help the market boost, so he conflated comments from China’s vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese.
Based on what I know, Chinese and US top negotiators didn't hold phone talks in recent days. The two sides have been keeping contact at technical level, it doesn't have significance that President Trump suggested. China didn't change its position. China won't cave to US pressure.
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) August 26, 2019
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he hasn’t heard of this situation regarding the two calls that the U.S. mentioned. He added China hopes the U.S. can “remain calm, return to rationality, stop wrong practices, and create conditions for the two sides to conduct consultations on the basis of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit.”
The imposed language that is coming out of the White House in the last few weeks can be summed up to the fact that the economy is showing warning signs Trump didn’t expect, his trade war with China is lasting much longer than expected, and yet, he doesn’t want to give in. His grand promise to his voters about building a wall along the southern border has also gone unrealized.
Trump apparently would like this accomplishment to run on in 2020 but now he sees that the time is running short to fulfill some of the key promises he made to voters in 2016.
He obviously went so far that he recently told his assistants that he would pardon them if they committed illegal acts while building this wall and while his spokesmen insist he was only kidding, Trump has confirmed his being serious about finishing the wall because he thinks it is the key to his reelection.
It seems Trump forgot how it is to be a businessman. Otherwise, he would not be fake pumping the stock market. However, investors are pretty much aware of his lies and their moves are showing exactly that. Despite raising new highs this year, the Dow Jones and S&P 500 have both moved sideways since Trump first introduced tariffs on China. Trump’s fib helped Dow Jones Industrial Average to gain 270 points at one instance.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer said he’s “aghast” they trust the People’s Republic of China more than they trust the White House.
“The predominance of coverage this morning is that the president is lying. I’m not willing to say that he’s lying. We can doubt him, but in the end we’re doubting a guy that didn’t want the market to crash.”
