President Trump sent off a Twitter thread on Friday morning about trade talks with China, only to strangely take it offline and then just repost the entire thing a second time.
Trump wrote early in the morning that there is "absolutely no need to rush" a trade deal with China, saying that talks "continue in a very congenial matter." This came after Trump raised tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese exports from 10 percent to 25 percent, CNN reports, ahead of another day of negotiations. China in response said it would "have to take necessary countermeasures."
The president continued in his thread by saying that the "process has begun" to place additional tariffs at 25 percent on another $325 billion, going on to argue that tariffs "will bring in FAR MORE wealth to our country" than a trade deal and that the money taken in through tariffs will be used to buy "agricultural products from our Great Farmers, in larger amounts than China ever did, and ship it to poor & starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance."
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As this Twitter thread went live, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 100 points, CNBC reports.
But Trump deleted the entire Twitter thread about a half-hour later, leading to speculation that he was quickly walking back the "no need to rush" position, reacting to the Dow, or perhaps taking to heart criticism from those pointing out that China doesn't actually pay the U.S. Treasury for these tariffs, as he claimed.
But by 7:43 a.m., Trump had reposted the thread. At first, one tweet was missing: one in which, as Bloomberg's Shawn Donnan notes, Trump cited the incorrect number on the United States' agricultural exports to China. But then after a delay, Trump just ended up reposting that same tweet again, leaving the reason he originally deleted the thread a mystery.
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