Trump suggests China tariffs will fall



Host: Now, the White House spokesperson said there'd been good progress on reaching US-China trade deal, despite Donald Trump's exceptionally large tariffs on Chinese imports and Beijing's hefty retaliation. And the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, has been talking in even more positive tones.



And, as I mentioned earlier, Donald Trump himself has been giving a few hints about what might be happening. Well, I'm joined to talk about all this by our business reporter, Jonathan Joseph. Jonathan, first of all, well, what have we heard and from who?



Jonathan: We've heard quite a bit, Roger. In the last few minutes, President Trump himself has been talking to reporters in the White House, and he's been striking something of a more conciliatory tone when it comes to China, saying that tariffs would not be anywhere near 145%.



It's not clear how and when things might change, but he seems to be rowing back on some of his more outlandish proposals, sort of perhaps opening the door to negotiations, saying that he would be very nice with Beijing and that tariffs could fall significantly if there was a deal, but they wouldn't fall to zero. So that is something that US stock markets will be positive about, I expect, when they open again tomorrow.



But it also echoes some positive comments from the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson. I understand that he was speaking at a private event in Washington, and he said that no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable. And that's the situation where at the moment the U.S. has announced tariffs of 145 percent on imports from China and Beijing has retaliated with 125 percent tariffs for goods that go the other way around.



Mr. Besson went on to say that he thought there would be in the very near future some kind of de-escalation and that that should give the markets a sigh of relief. So it seems that there is a more positive tone.



Host: Yes, and you say, you know, that immediately perhaps something might happen, but the actual process really, I mean, Scott Besson was certainly not suggesting it was going to happen any time soon.



Jonathan:  No, that's right, Roger. He said that the goal wasn't to decouple relations between the US and China, but it seemed that there wasn't any suggestion that there would be a quick fix. He said it would be a slog and that no one in the administration, that is of Donald Trump, believes that they have free and fair trade when it comes to China.

请为以上文章提供2个总结性的英文的简答题，并在末尾附上2个答案。总字数绝对不得超过100个英文单词



词汇表

White House spokesperson [waɪt haʊs ˈspəʊkspɜːsn] 白宫发言人

exceptionally large tariffs [ɪkˈsepʃənəli lɑːdʒ ˈtærɪfs] 极高的关税

hefty [ˈhefti] 强有力的，可观的，大量的

retaliation [rɪˌtæliˈeɪʃn] 报复，反击

US Treasury Secretary [ˈtreʒəri ˈsekrətri] 美国财政部长

strike [straɪk] 采用，摆出（某种方式或态度）

conciliatory tone [kənˈsɪliətəri təʊn] 缓和的语气；安抚的语气

row back [rəʊ] 撤回，收回

outlandish [aʊtˈlændɪʃ] 古怪的，奇异的，离谱的

proposal [prəˈpəʊzl] 提议，建议

stock market [ˈstɒk ˌmɑːkɪt] 股票市场

echo [ˈekəʊ] 与…呼应；重复，响起回声

status quo [ˌsteɪtəs ˈkwəʊ] 现状

retaliate [rɪˈtælieɪt] 报复，反击

go the other way around 朝相反方向，反过来

de-escalation [ˌdiːˌeskəˈleɪʃn] （局势、冲突等）降级，缓和

decouple [ˌdiːˈkʌpl] 使分离，使脱钩

quick fix [kwɪk fɪks] 快速解决办法，权宜之计

slog [slɒɡ] 艰难的工作，苦差事



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