A number of U.S. news outlets reported Friday that the Trump administration is considering limiting investment in China, but White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Monday morning those reports are fake news.
“It was really irresponsible journalism and the problem we have here … these bad stories push out the good.”
“That story, which appeared in Bloomberg: I’ve read it far more carefully than it was written,” Navarro told CNBC. “Over half of it was highly inaccurate or simply flat-out false.”
Bloomberg wasn’t the only news organization to publish the news that the White was considering such restrictions, which would include a block of all American investment in China. Bloomberg first reported that the Trump administration is considering limits to U.S. investors’ portfolio flows into China, including delisting Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges as it looks for more leverage in the ongoing trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
“It was really irresponsible journalism and the problem we have here … these bad stories push out the good,” Navarro said. “And what happens is as soon as Bloomberg puts it out there, there’s pressure from others to put it out there.
“This story was just so full of inaccuracies and in terms of the truth of the matter, what the Treasury said I think was accurate,” Navarro added without saying which parts of the report were inaccurate despite claiming that more than half of it was wrong.
Over the weekend, a Treasury spokeswoman said “the administration is not contemplating blocking Chinese companies from listing shares on the U.S. stock exchanges at this time.”
The report comes ahead of the latest round of negotiations between the U.S. and China, which are scheduled to begin Oct. 10 in Washington. The two countries have levied tariffs on billions of dollars of each others’ exports over the past two years, with the U.S. levying 15% tariffs on another round of Chinese imports on Sept. 1 including clothes, tools and electronics. China retaliated with tariffs on American soybeans, crude oil and pharmaceuticals.
