President Xi Jinping told Spain's prime minister on Friday that China and the European Union must join together in defending globalization and opposing "unilateral acts of bullying." It's a clear swipe at Trump's tariff policies.
Xi, in his first public comments on the issue since Trump launched his tariff offensive last week, said there could be "no winners" in any trade war, and he said the EU had a key role to play in ensuring global economic stability.
Spain's Pedro Sanchez said China and the United States needed to hold talks to defuse the situation, and he also called for a more balanced relationship between Beijing and the 27-nation EU, which has its own trade issues with China.
"China and the EU should fulfill their international responsibilities, jointly safeguard the trend of economic globalization and the international trade environment, and jointly oppose unilateral acts of bullying," Xi said.
In his talks with Sanchez, Xi talked up the ability of China and the EU, respectively the world's second and third biggest economies, to counter Trump's tariffs.
"There are no winners in a tariff war," Xi said, without explicitly mentioning Trump or the United States, prompting the Spanish leader to say: "Trade wars aren't good - the world needs China and the U.S. to talk."
Sanchez's trip to Beijing, his third in as many years, aims to forge closer economic and political ties with China amid the global fallout from Trump's tariff policy, seeking to position Spain as an interlocutor between China and the EU and to attract more Chinese investment.
Source: Reuters
