"This Is A Red Line": Beijing Warns Trump Trade Deal Is Off If US Imposes Tariffs

In a scathing editorial warning Trump to back off on his latest tariff threat, on Sunday China said that any trade deals between the US and China, and any progress and commitments made so far in bilateral negotiations would be withdrawn if President Donald Trump follows through with this threat.

"If the U.S. rolls out trade measures including tariffs, all the agreements reached in the negotiations won’t take effect," the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported this morning, citing a statement from the Chinese team that met with a U.S. delegation led by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, which arrived in China overnight.

Separately, China has continued to express growing frustration with the tactics deployed by the White House, and an editorial in the nationalist, state-run tabloid Global Times said that "the U.S. can’t have its cake and eat it too," adding that the U.S. "needs to choose between tariffs and exporting more to China."

China's anger is the result of Trump’s revival of the simmering trade war between the two superpowers after Trump last week unveiled a plan to slap tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports, casting into doubt ongoing trade discussion about how to reduce China’s $375 billion goods-trade surplus with the U.S.

As Bloomberg clarifies, the Xinhua report came out on Sunday after Ross met with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He for talks that Ross called “friendly and frank, and covered some useful topics about specific export items.” At the same time as negotiators focus on technical steps to reduce the U.S. deficit, Trump’s aggressive reversals have rattled Beijing as it raises concerns about the possibility that any agreement made could be simply torn up by the president.

“China is concerned over the U.S.’s unpredictability, especially after Trump turned an about-face on tariffs,” said Gai Xinzhe, an analyst at Bank of China’s finance institute in Beijing. “Trump needs to give out more goodwill in exchange for really productive negotiations. Bluff, threat, and willful moves might work in business bargaining, but they could backfire in talks among nations.”

Meanwhile, suggesting that all the progress achieved over the past two months in trade negotiations would be lost if Trump follows though with tariffs, a commentary by state-run China Radio International said that the government’s stance on canceling any agreements reached in the talks if Trump’s tariffs go into effect was a "red line."

Meanwhile, the negotiations continue. According to Bloomberg, the Ross-led U.S. delegation, which was in Beijing for two days, included energy and agriculture experts, reflecting the U.S. desire to increase exports of natural gas and food.

https:// www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-03/red-line-beijing-warns-trump-trade-deal-if-us-imposes-tariffs

In Leaked Letter, Trump's Lawyers Tell Mueller To Go Pound Sand

A 20-page confidential letter from President Trump's legal team leaked to the New York Times argues that President Trump could not have obstructed justice at any point during his presidency due to his Constitutional authority, and that he cannot be compelled to testify in front of Special Counsel Robert Mueller due to his Constitutional powers as President.

The letter, crafted by Trump's legal team, reveals that the White House has been waging a quiet campaign for several months to prevent Mueller from trying to subpoena the president - contending that because the Constitution empowers him to "if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon," Trump could not have illegally obstucted any aspect of the investigation into potential collusion between his campaign and Russia during the 2016 US election.

Mr. Trump’s defense is a wide-ranging interpretation of presidential power. In saying he has the authority to end a law enforcement inquiry or pardon people, his lawyers ambiguously left open the possibility that they were referring only to the investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, which he is accused of pressuring the F.B.I. to drop — or perhaps the one Mr. Mueller is pursuing into Mr. Trump himself as well.

Mr. Dowd and Mr. Sekulow outlined 16 areas they said the special counsel was scrutinizing as part of the obstruction investigation, including the firings of Mr. Comey and of Mr. Flynn, and the president’s reaction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation. -NYT

"It remains our position that the president's actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself, and that he could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired," writes President Trump's former attorney John Dowd, who left the team in March.

https:// www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-03/leaked-letter-trumps-lawyers-tell-mueller-go-pound-sand