‘100% he will buy it,’ Trump says of President Xi on a trade deal

Donald Trump: You can’t compete when you need to pay this much for energy

Former President Trump addressed questions about the economy in Pennsylvania as part of his campaign.

On Monday afternoon, former President Donald Trump announced that his first call if re-elected will be to Chinese President Xi Jinping. His objective? To enforce the trade deal established during his first term in office as the 45th president.

Trump stated, “My first call, I’m going to call up President Xi. I’m going to say, ‘You have to honor the deal you made. We made a deal. You’d buy $50 billion worth of American farm product.’ And I guarantee you he will buy it. 100% he will buy it,” during a campaign event in Smithton, Pennsylvania.

In 2020, Trump secured a trade agreement with China, committing Beijing to stop intellectual property theft, avoid currency manipulation, cooperate in financial services, and purchase an additional $200 billion of U.S. products over two years. This included up to $50 billion of U.S. agriculture. In return, the U.S. agreed to reduce tariffs on some Chinese products while maintaining duties on $375 billion worth of merchandise.

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, looks on during a campaign stop addressing Pennsylvanians about the threat of Communist China to U.S. agriculture at the Smith Family Farm on Sept. 23, 2024, in Smithton, Pennsylvania. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The deal was known as the “phase one” trade agreement and followed an 18-month trade war between the U.S. and China.

Trump criticized the current administration, saying, “Biden and Harris, they’re never going to enforce anything… That group is a disaster. It’s a disaster for our country in so many ways, but certainly the farmers are one of those ways.”

Tractor with combine on farm field and chimney rock, Scotts Bluff National Monument; Scottsbluff, Nebraska, United States of America. (Hawk Buckman/Design Pics Editorial/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The former president joined a panel of farmers as part of the Protecting America Initiative, led by Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, and former New York Republican Representative Lee Zeldin. This group aims to prevent China from infiltrating U.S. farmland, the food supply, education system, energy production, manufacturing, and national security.

President Joe Biden greets China’s President Xi Jinping in Woodside, USA, Nov. 15, 2023. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool, File)

Trump also declared that he would call on Xi to enforce a death penalty on fentanyl dealers sending the deadly drug to the U.S. via the Mexican border.

“Second thing I’m going to do is, I’m going to say you have to give the death penalty to your fentanyl dealers who are sending fentanyl. You know, in China, they give the death penalty. They don’t have a drug problem because they give the death penalty,” Trump emphasized.

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign stop in Smithton, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 23, 2024. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Referring to the panel of farmers, Trump added, “We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people a year. It comes through the southern border, which is now the weakest border in history. It was the best border we ever had when I was there. We built hundreds of miles of wall, and everything was the best. Now, it’s the weakest. I had a handshake deal with him (Xi); it was going to happen very quickly, and then this side didn’t do anything about it. He suggested to me, ‘Anybody sends fentanyl to the United States, it’s the death penalty. They get the maximum penalty.’”

Trump concluded, “He would have done it. Then we had an election that didn’t exactly work out too good.”

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, looks on at a campaign stop at the Smith Family Farm on Sept. 23, 2024. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Trump was accompanied by Grenell, Zeldin, Republican Senate candidate for Pennsylvania Dave McCormick, and other political supporters during the event in Pennsylvania.