The US President said Chinese officials got in touch with Washington over the ongoing trade war, calling for both sides to get back to negotiating a deal. Speaking at the G7 summit, Trump welcomed the development.

He said that “China called last night our top trade people and said ‘Let’s get back to the table.’ So, we will be getting back to the table and I think they want to do something.”

The US president added: “They have been hurt very badly but they understand this is the right thing to do and I have great respect for it. This is a very positive development for the world.”

The US will start negotiations shortly, Trump said.

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Washington and Beijing were getting along very well and were talking, the US leader said on Saturday. He noted: “I think they want to make a deal much more than I do. I’m getting a lot of money in tariffs, it’s coming in by the billions. We’ve never gotten 10 cents from China, so we will see what happens.”

On Friday, Trump tweeted that duties on $250 million worth of Chinese goods already taxed at 25 percent will increase to 30 percent starting on October 1. He also said additional tariffs on another $300 billion of Chinese goods, which come into effect on September 1, will now be 15 percent instead of 10 percent.

The announcement followed Beijing’s vow to hike levies on $75 billion worth of US exports and to resume 25 percent tariffs on American automobiles.

Also on rt.com Higher tariffs & currency devaluation don’t solve trade disputes, IMF warns US & China

Earlier, China had urged Washington not to go through with its threat of tariffs, in order to avoid a further escalation of the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

At the G-7 summit, Trump said on Sunday that he could declare the escalating US-China trade war as a national emergency if he wanted to. “In many ways, this is an emergency,” he said.

“I could declare a national emergency, I think when they steal and take out and intellectual property theft anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion a year, and when we have a total loss of almost a trillion dollars a year for many years,” Trump said. He added that he had no plan right now to call for a national emergency.

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