(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he called off last weekend’s trade talks with China and that Bejing’s handling of the coronavirus is “unthinkable.”
“I don’t want to talk to China right now,” Trump said Tuesday in Yuma, Arizona. “We’ll see what happens” on pulling out of phase one of the deal, Trump said.
The talks had been aimed at reviewing progress at the six-month mark of their phase-one trade agreement. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He was supposed to hold a video conference call with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin but it was postponed indefinitely.
The talks never made it on to any official public calendar in Washington or Beijing, but the South China Morning Post reported that they were set for Saturday. Earlier, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that information on high-level talks will be released “in due course.”
“What China did to the world was unthinkable,” Trump said, referring to the coronavirus.
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