WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that he will ease off his demands for tough new restrictions on Chinese investment in technology industries and will rely instead a 1988 law being updated by Congress that authorizes the government to review foreign investments for national security problems.

“We have the greatest technology in the world, people come and steal it,” he said in response to questions from reporters at the White House. “We have to protect that and that can be done through CFIUS,” referring to an interagency group, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which screens foreign investments to see whether they endanger national security.