US wants fair, reciprocal trade with other countries: Trump

Reiterating that China badly wants a trade deal with America, President Donald Trump said Friday that he wants a fair and reciprocal trade with other countries.

Trump, who has launched a series of new policy initiatives to challenge the Chinese assertiveness and imposed massive import tariffs on Chinese products, said that he has told the leadership of China that his is no longer the same old White House.

"They (Chinese leadership) want to make a (trade) deal so badly. And I said 'you're not ready yet. No, you're not ready. No'. I told him you're not ready yet'. I did say that. They've never heard that before, but I said you're not ready," Trump told a Black leadership conference at the White House.

"When they see a building that's, you know, a 1790-type version building, what they say to themselves, you know? That's like a new building. But for this country, this isn't -- 1790. If you remember, Number six. I'm 45. Number six, President number six -- you know who that was -- President number six was the first occupant of the White House. But the history here is incredible," he said.

Trump said every citizen benefits when his administration stops foreign countries from cheating American workers.

"That's what they've been doing. They're called globalists, they like the globe. I like the globe, too. I like the globe, too, but we have to take care of our people. We have to," the President said.

A few days ago, he had described himself as a nationalist.

"When we have trade deals, we have to make good trade deals for our country. So when I took office, we lost USD 807 billion that year on trade. We want our trade with other countries to be fair and reciprocal, the reciprocal is very important because we have other countries charging us tariffs of 100 per cent and more and we don't charge them anything," said the US President.

"Now we're charging them. We're seeing a big difference," Trump added.