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In Oval Office interview, Donald Trump says China may have let the coronavirus spread globally in order to destabilize competing economies. “There’s a chance it was intentional…I call it the plague. The plague that was sent by China."
@MichaelCBender
wsj.com/articles/trump…
So you're saying China let the virus spread to extend the economic pain? Trump: “Correct. They’re saying, man, we’re in a mess. The United States is killing us. Don’t forget, my economy…was blowing them away. And the reason is the tariffs”
@MichaelCBender
wsj.com/articles/trump…
The president said he had no intelligence to support that claim, only an internal sense. He said there was a better chance it was a mistake. “I don’t think they would do that…But you never know. But it has had an impact.”
@MichaelCBender
wsj.com/articles/trump…
Trump: "China, we were beating China badly. China, last year, would have had the worst year they’ve ever had in…decades. And that was because I put a lot of tariffs on China…I don’t want them to have bad years, but they happened to have a very bad year."
wsj.com/articles/trans…
Trump: "Of course they didn’t even report their numbers this year. You know, they refused to report their numbers, right? But last year was a bad year for China, one of…the very bad years that they’ve had. And that’s largely because I put tariffs on."
wsj.com/articles/trans…
Trump: "Nobody ever put tariffs on them. Nobody ever did anything to China. China walked away from Obama-Biden. No tariffs, no downside, no nothing. Whereas we took in billions of dollars of tariffs, and they were all put on by me."
@MichaelCBender wsj.com/articles/trans…
Trump: "Look how tough I’ve been on Huawei. Nobody has been tougher than me on Huawei…We’ve convinced other nations not to do business with them. Whether it’s U.K. or Italy or others…Nobody has ever been so tough on a company as I have to Huawei."
wsj.com/articles/trans…
Q: In the book, Bolton says that you effectively gave your blessing to President Xi to continue building camps for the Uighur Muslims.
Trump: No, that’s not true. That’s not true. In fact, I approved a deal—a reprimand, etc, etc—from Congress.
wsj.com/articles/trans…
Trump on Uighur bill: I could have killed that very easily. All I would have to do is make a statement that I’m against it…this has been going in Congress for a long time. And I could have fought it. And I would have won.
wsj.com/articles/trans…
Trump: "I think the trade deal is a great deal. But ever since we got hit with the Chinese plague, I feel different toward everything having to do with China. And I’ve always been hardline on China."
on.wsj.com/2YLQVPW
Donald Trump: "Bolton never told me to do tariffs on China. Bolton never thought you could get any tariffs done on China. Bolton has no economic sense. Bolton never thought you could get tariffs on China. They paid us billions of dollars."
on.wsj.com/2YLQVPW
Trump: "Nobody has been tough on China like I am…Under Obama and Biden, they got away with murder…What I’ve been doing to China should have been done a long time ago. Obama-Biden never…They just came in and it was pillage. It was terrible."
on.wsj.com/2YLQVPW
Trump: "The deal we made with China was a good deal, but I feel differently. The ink was barely dry when we got hit with the virus, and I view that…whole deal differently now. I view the relationship with China differently."
on.wsj.com/2YLQVPW
Trump: "So they have a big problem, a big contagious problem…And I closed our country in January, the end of January, I closed our country to China. Nancy Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown at the end of February."
on.wsj.com/2YLQVPW
Trump: "Bolton might say, oh, Trump wasn’t tough enough on China and wasn’t tough enough on this. I know that kind of shit, because he lied a lot. He is a liar. Nobody was tougher in China. Nobody was tougher on Iran. Nobody’s been tougher on anything."
on.wsj.com/2YLQVPW
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Jonathan Cheng
@JChengWSJ
In early February, a Japanese glass supplier got an unexpected message from a Chinese government trade group: How can we help? As China feels coronavirus pain, it's reaching out to foreign companies to keep the investment dollars flowing in.
@Kubota_Yoko on.wsj.com/2JRHsiN
@Kubota_Yoko Ford Motor, which had trouble procuring car lamps produced from its supplier in Hubei province, received special clearances from the Chinese government to quickly procure parts from the locked-down province.
@Kubota_Yoko on.wsj.com/2JRHsiN
@Kubota_Yoko China's eagerness to accommodate foreign companies, many of them American, comes even as Beijing jostles with Washington for control of the coronavirus narrative. It shows how eager China is to help restart businesses as the pandemic takes a toll.
on.wsj.com/2JRHsiN
Read 5 tweets
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Jonathan Cheng
@JChengWSJ
On the Saturday @WSJ front page: A deep-deep-dive on who knew what when in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. Masterfully done by @JNBPage @xinwenfan @natashakhanhk @wangfanfan @Lingling_Wei @patrick1barta and others. Thread to follow.
on.wsj.com/2VRb2fy
@WSJ @JNBPage @xinwenfan @natashakhanhk @wangfanfan @Lingling_Wei @patrick1barta The story begins with Wei Guixian, a 57-year-old seafood merchant in Wuhan's Huanan market, who became one of the first to get sick, on Dec. 10. She thought she had a common cold, but by Dec. 18, she was on the brink of death.
on.wsj.com/2VRb2fy
@WSJ @JNBPage @xinwenfan @natashakhanhk @wangfanfan @Lingling_Wei @patrick1barta Ms. Wei first sought help at a small private clinic across the street from her home. For two days, she took antibiotics through an IV drip. “It’s pretty effective for ordinary colds."
on.wsj.com/2VRb2fy
Read 27 tweets
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Jonathan Cheng
@JChengWSJ
There's been a lot of focus on @WSJ in China, so offering a thread of our news bureau's coronavirus coverage, starting with a Jan. 8 scoop that first named the then-mysterious pathogen as a "novel coronavirus." @WHO confirmed it Jan. 10.
@natashakhanhk
wsj.com/articles/new-v…
Prior to that, we had published one report on Jan. 6 on the existence of a fast-spreading, still-unidentified viral pneumonia in Wuhan that had infected 59 people up until then, and that authorities had ruled out SARS and MERS.
@wangfanfan
wsj.com/articles/healt…
We ran our first on-the-ground report from Wuhan after a visit Jan. 7. @wangfanfan and @StephanieAYang found a city still largely unconcerned with the virus. "I heard that we could move back before the Spring Festival," said one Huanan Market fishmonger.
wsj.com/articles/sars-…
Read 45 tweets

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