China 'suffering greatly' from tariffs: Trump once again targets Beijing, says Xi Jinping 'wants to meet' him

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday (May 6) once again targeted China, saying that their economy is "suffering greatly" because of the tariffs they brought in. 

The US president further said that the Chinese are "not doing business right now" and their ships are "turning around in the Pacific Ocean."

Trump added that the Chinese leadership "want to meet", adding that they want to negotiate a trade deal to end the tariffs. 

"We will be meeting with them at the right time," he said during his meeting with UK Prime Minister Mark Carney. 

US President Trump and UK PM Keir Starmer have now departed for private talks, where the media is not invited. 

Earlier today, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that China has not engaged in negotiations yet.

"We are currently negotiating with 17 of those trading partners. China, we have not engaged in negotiations with as of yet," Bessent said. 

Last week, Trump in an interview to NBC, hinted at lowering tariffs on China, stressing that Beijing wants to do business with them. 

He acknowledged that the current tariffs are so high that the two of the world's largest economies have essentially stopped doing business with each other. 

"At some point, I'm going to lower them, because otherwise, you could never do business with them, and they want to do business very much," Trump said in an interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press with Kristen Welker'.

He further said that there have been "positive" statements from China in the last few days, while, he also said that any deal finalised with China has to be "fair". 

China on Friday last week, hinted at being open to sit across the US on the negotiation table since Trump's tariffs were announced on Liberation Day, saying it was evaluating the possibility of trade talks with the US.