For a third time in five days, Chinese officials have vehemently denied that they have had any dialogue with the US on striking a tariff deal, contradicting multiple claims by US president Donald Trump that talks were ongoing between the two countries.
“I would like to reiterate that China and the US have not conducted consultations or negotiations on the tariffs issue,” Guo Jiakun, a ministry spokesperson, told a regular news conference on Monday.
“If the US really wants to solve the problem through dialogue and negotiation, it should stop threatening and blackmailing (China),” he added.
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This is the third such denial issued by Beijing since last week, with China first saying on Thursday that it had not held trade talks with Washington despite repeated comments from the US government suggesting there had been engagement.
“China and the United States have not conducted consultations or negotiations on tariffs, let alone reached an agreement,” foreign ministry’s Guo told reporters at the time. Any information claiming otherwise was “fake news”, he said.
That same day, however, Trump asserted again that the two sides were negotiating, adding that the two sides had held talks that very day.
“They had a meeting this morning,” Trump told reporters, declining to say to whom he was referring. “It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.”
Then, in an interview published on Friday, Trump told Time magazine that he had received a call from Chinese President Xi Jinping and that the two sides were in the middle of negotiating on tariffs.
”There’s a number at which they will feel comfortable,” he had said.
But on Saturday, Chinese officials refuted Trump once again, this time on social media. Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the US, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that any claims of discussions between the two sides were “misleading”.
Liu also repeated Beijing’s earlier demands that the US remove all unilateral tariffs it has imposed on China if it wants any genuine dialogue on the trade war.
On the U.S. Expressing Willingness to Dialogue with #China on #Tariff:
🔺There have been no consultations or negotiations between China and the #US on the issue of tariffs, let alone any agreement being reached.
🔺The #tariffwar was unilaterally provoked by the U.S., and… pic.twitter.com/WGMrlSlUW8
— Liu Pengyu 刘鹏宇 (@SpoxCHNinUS) April 26, 2025
On Monday, aside from reiterating Liu’s denials, foreign ministry’s Guo also claimed Trump and Xi had not had any conversations.
“As far as I know, the two heads of state have not called each other recently,” he said.
‘Who’s doing the talking?’
The back and forth between the two superpowers underscores the strained communication defining the current trade war, adding volatility to global markets and prolonging economic pain on both sides.
On Sunday, in a detailed breakdown of various interviews given by Trump officials to US media, British newspaper The Independent noted that “no one in Beijing or Washington seems to know who is doing the talking.”
The paper cited interviews of Trump cabinet members on news channels such as ABC and CNN to report how none of the officials were able to give a clear response when asked about who they have spoken to in China or why Beijing was denying that there was any dialogue.
The situation adds to increasing uncertainty about any potential negotiations on the spiralling trade war that threatens to cause a “significant slowdown” in global growth.
The US has imposed a cumulative 245% tariffs on China, while Beijing has responded with retaliatory tariffs of 125%.
China has also stopped all exports of critical rare earths and rare earth magnets to the US — a move that analysts say will dial up risks for American military contractors, chipmakers and electric vehicle-makers, and also the robotics industry.
There have, however, been some signs of the tariffs cooling down, with Trump saying last week that tariffs on China were set to drop substantially.
Meanwhile, China also announced it would exempt some US imports from its tariffs. It was asking firms to identify critical goods they need levy-free, Reuters reported on Friday.
On Monday, Chinese policymakers also went on to downplay the impact of US tariffs on its growth to calm nerves around the world’s second-largest economy’s fragile recovery from the pandemic-era slowdown.
- Vishakha Saxena
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