Washington, July 20: The United States (US) President Donald Trump has shown willingness to slap tariffs on all $505 billion of Chinese imports. In an interview with CNBC, Trump said that there was a massive trade deficit with China. The US president also said that countries across the globe, including US’ allies partners, were taking advantage of the country. Trump also said that the trade deficit with the European Union was $151 billion, while the deficit with Mexico was $120 billion.

In the interview with CNBC's Joe Kernen, Trump referring to trade deficit with China said that he was ready to go to an extent of slapping $ 500 billion tariffs on Chinese products. In June, the US had imposed $34 billion tariffs on Chinese products, but surprisingly China, in retaliation, also imposed the same amount of tariffs on US products. Trump said that the stock market gains since his election victory gave him the opportunity to be more aggressive in his trade war with China and other countries.

The US president said this time China wouldn’t be able to match the tariffs imposed by the US. Trump also blamed the former US presidents for not addressing this issue. He said that the Chinese officials accepted that no US president had ever discussed the trade deficit issue before. Trump further added that he did not care whether China like his decision or not, but he would go ahead with the move of imposing tariffs.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 20, 2018 05:39 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).