President Donald Trump says the US isn't ready to make a trade deal with China, but he's leaving open the possibility that the two nations could strike an agreement some day.
Speaking in Tokyo on Monday, Trump said of China, "they would like to make a deal. We're not ready to make a deal."
He added, "We're taking in tens of millions of dollars of tariffs and that number could go up very, very substantially, very easily."
Still, Trump predicted a "very good deal with China sometime into the future because I don't believe that China can continue to pay these really hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs."
The world's two largest economies are in a tense stand-off over trade. Trump has said he expected to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, next month at a G-20 meeting in Japan.
