Donald Trump, who claims to have seen elements allowing him to think that the new coronavirus would come from a Chinese laboratory, said Thursday, April 30, considering punitive taxes against Beijing.

"Yes," he replied to a White House reporter who asked, "Have you seen anything so far that makes you seriously believe that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the source "of the pandemic? "It was something that could have been contained in the original place and I think it could have been contained very easily," he said.

"Border taxes"

The President, who did not specify what the evidence was, added that he could therefore impose punitive "customs taxes" on China. Asked about the possibility that the United States would not repay its debt to China in retaliation, Donald Trump replied: "I can do it differently. I can do the same thing but differently by imposing customs taxes", as he l has already done during the trade dispute between it and Beijing.

Donald Trump regularly accuses China of lying about the human toll of the epidemic, while his country has more than 62,000 deaths officially linked to Covid-19. He also recently raised the possibility of asking Beijing to pay billions of dollars in compensation for damage caused by the virus.

With AFP

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