Washington (AFP)
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin assured Sunday that President Donald Trump did have the authority to demand that US companies stop doing business in China but "he did not do it."
Interviewed by Fox News while participating in the G7 in France, Mnuchin said that Donald Trump "would have the power" to ask companies to leave China "under the law IEEPA (International Economic Emergency Power Act) s he declared an urgency.
But "he did not do it," said Donald Trump's finance minister.
"I think what he was saying is ordering companies to start looking for (solutions) as we are in a prolonged trade war," he said.
"We want companies to do business with business partners who respect us and trade with us fairly," he added.
The law mentioned by Mr Mnuchin, adopted in 1977 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, gives the US president the authority to regulate a large number of economic transactions after pronouncing a state of emergency. This text has never been used to weigh in a commercial dispute.
Furious about Beijing's counter-attack on the trade war he has been waging for over a year, Donald Trump opted on Friday for the bidding war, promising to tax almost all Chinese imports by the end of the year. 'year. Most importantly, he "ordered", in a tweet, American companies "to immediately start looking for alternatives to China, including repatriating your companies and manufacturing your products in the United States."
His economic adviser Larry Kudlow, also questioned Sunday from France, also assured that the president "had the power" to prohibit US companies to trade with China but that "nothing like this for now in the cards".
"What he's suggesting to US companies ... is: you should think about moving your operations and supply chains out of China, and secondly, we'd like you to come home," M said. Kudlow on CNN.
"Come back to the US We have very low corporate tax rates and major deregulation programs, and our economy is doing well now," he said.
© 2019 AFP