The Chinese government said on Monday that President Xi Jinping had not recently talked to President Trump, once again killing some idea that two leaders were secretly chatting to improve their trade war.
Beijing submitted this statement at a regular press conference, defeating Trump's claim last week in an interview with Time magazine that XI had picked up the phone and called him.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, there are no speeches, negotiations or back door activities between the two largest economy on the planet.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun stood by journalists and said“To my knowledge, there hasn't been a recent phone call between the two heads of state.”
He went even further to drive home: “I want to repeat that China and the United States are not dealing with consultations or negotiations on tariff issues. These are wrong.” It was about as clean and cold as possible.
No talk, no deals or progress.
Beijing turns off Trump's lies
Despite the fact that China threw a concrete wall on the idea, Trump kept his own story alive. Last week, he tried to soften the mess with his eccentric high tariffs, promising that these taxes would “come down significantly” and claim that if Xi wanted to jump in, he would be “very nice”.
“He is called. And I don't think this is a sign of weakness in his behalf,” Trump said during his time interview, trying to make it random. But he did not say what they were supposed to talk about when the call even happened or why it was not officially mentioned.
Later on Friday, CNN forced Alayna to coach Trump to explain himself when leaving the southern part of the White House. Instead of answering Trump, Trump said, “I don't want to comment on it, but I've talked to him many times.”
There were no details, confirmation, just vague answers – classic trump card. Publicly available data show that the last real phone call between Trump and XI was on January 17th, days before Trump had an oath for term. It was several months ago.
Even after Trump continued the claims that the negotiations took place, China began to fall down. The lesson before the news interview reached the news, the Chinese Foreign Ministry filed another statement warning the US that they did not “mislead the public” with trade negotiations.
After returning to the White House, Trump has ordered 145% tax from China, but he made exceptions to electronics like smartphones and computers. He called them reciprocal, although this word did not make sense if you know the whole context.
But China replied, raising its tariffs to American imports to 125%. At the same time, they made some quiet moves behind the scenes, reducing tariffs to a certain US semiconductor. Import agencies took out the change, saying that China was trying to give its technical industry a little breathing space while keeping pressure on the US.
In the meantime, the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went to ABC on Sunday and made it quite obvious that he had no idea about the phone call between Trump and XI.
When Martha Raddatz asked her directly if Trump had talked to XI, Scott said, “I don't know if President Trump had spoken to President XI.”
Instead of confirming something, the former Wall Street Star tried to cool things, saying that the US government talked about trade with “different nations” and admitted that high tariffs could not last forever.
Even by pushing harder, Scott could only say that Trump and XI had a very good relationship with each other and a lot of respect.
Although Trump paints a picture of secret transactions and cozy phone calls, Beijing and even his own guy tell a completely different story: speeches, talks, or fast ends for a brutal tariff fight.
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