Will meet Jinping Xi at G20 summit in Japan next month, says Donal Trump

US President Donald Trump on Monday said he will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in June on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Japan. “We are going to be meeting, as you know, at the G20 in Japan. And that will be, I think, probably a very fruitful meeting,” Trump told reporters. “But we are taking in, right now, hundreds of billions of dollars. We are taking in billions of dollars of tariffs.... We have never taken in 10 cents until I got elected. Now we are taking in billions and billions.... In addition to that we have another USD 325 billion that we can do, if we decided to do it,” he said.

“So we are taking it in tens of billions of dollars. We have never done that before with China. We have never done that before with anybody, frankly, because we have been taken advantage of all of our trade deals,” Trump said in response to a question.

Trump on Monday defending his tariff policy blamed China for breaking the trade deal. The world’s two largest economies are in a bruising trade war after the latest round of talks ended without an agreement.

In a series of tweets, Trump wrote, “we are right where we want to be with China. Remember, they broke the deal with us and tried to renegotiate,” Trump said, justifying his decision to impose a hefty tax on Chinese products, including fish, handbags, clothing and footwear. The new taxes would result in hefty revenue to the US, he said.

“We will be taking in tens of billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Buyers of product can make it themselves in the USA (ideal), or buy it from non-tariffed countries...,” he said.

“We will then spend (match or better) the money that China may no longer be spending with our Great Patriot Farmers (Agriculture), which is a small percentage of total tariffs received, and distribute the food to starving people in nations around the world! GREAT! #MAGA,” Trump said.