Trump signals tit-for-tat China tariffs may be near end; TikTok deal on ice

By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signaled a potential end to the tit-for-tat tariff hikes between the U.S. and China that shocked markets, and that a deal over the fate of social media platform TikTok may have to wait.

"I don’t want them to go higher because at a certain point you make it where people don’t buy," Trump told reporters about tariffs at the White House.

"So, I may not want to go higher or I may not want to even go up to that level. I may want to go to less because you know you want people to buy and, at a certain point, people aren’t gonna buy."

Trump’s comments further pointed to a diminished appetite for sharply higher across-the-board tariffs on dozens of countries after markets reacted violently to their introduction on April 2.

The Republican president slapped 10% tariffs on most goods entering the country but delayed the implementation of higher levies, pending negotiations.

Still, he hiked rates on Chinese imports, now totaling 145%, after Beijing retaliated with its own counter-measures. Last week, China said "will not respond" to a "numbers game with tariffs," its own signal that across-the-board rates would not rise further.

Trump said China had been in touch since the imposition of tariffs and expressed optimism that they could reach a deal.

While the two sides are in touch, sources told Reuters that free-flowing, high-level exchanges of the sorts that would lead to a deal have largely been absent.

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Speaking with reporters, Trump repeatedly declined to specify the nature of talks between the countries or whether they directly included Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Trump has repeatedly extended a legal deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of the short video app used by 170 million Americans. On Thursday, he said a spin-off deal would likely wait until the trade issue is settled.

"We have a deal for TikTok, but it’ll be subject to China so we’ll just delay the deal ’til this thing works out one way or the other," Trump said.

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