President Donald Trump said the final tariffs on goods from China “would not be near the” current rate of 145%, and “would drop considerably”.
At a press conference at the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump told journalists that “145% is very high, and it will not be so high”.
“This will drop considerably, but it will not be zero,” he added.
The president’s comments were in response to a question about the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said the prices between China and the United States had mainly created a commercial embargo on Tuesday.
Trump said the United States “were going to be very good for China, having an excellent relationship with President XI”. He did not provide more details to find out if he was in negotiation with Beijing on the prices.
Last week, Trump said that he couldn’t raise more prices on China, even if China continues to do so, saying there is a moment when “people do not buy”.
Representatives of Trump and the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, did not respond to requests for comments from Business Insider.
Trump imposed a 10% price on China in February. He said the price was aimed at stemming China’s drug flow in the United States.
Since then, the two countries have spent weeks stacking the reprisal prices on each other, degenerating trade tensions. The American prices on goods from China are now 145%. China retaliated with 125% tariffs on American manufacturing goods.
Trump used prices as a negotiation strategy. On April 3, he said that he would be open to reducing prices on countries if they were ready to give in the United States “something so phenomenal”.
He launched a price relief for China if he accepted an agreement on Tiktok. China’s Bytedance, which has Tiktok, faces an imminent deadline to stop the application or have it prohibited in the United States.
“Maybe I’m going to give them a short reduction in prices or something to do it, you know, because each point of the prices is worth more money than Tiktok,” Trump said in March.
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