“Massive amounts of money from China and other parts of the world is pouring into the United States for reasons of safety, investment, and interest rates!” the president said on Twitter. “We are in a very strong position. Companies are also coming to the U.S. in big numbers. A beautiful thing to watch!”
The president’s comments came amid an intensifying trade war between the U.S. and China, with the White House announcing last week plans to slap additional 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.
That triggered a wave of retaliatory rhetoric and action from Beijing, which has asked its state-run companies to stop buying U.S. agricultural products.
Such trade-related angst peaked on Monday, when China’s currency weakened to a key psychological level for the first time since 2008, fueling fears that Beijing could be intentionally undermining the yuan to boost its exports.
That sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting more than 750 points and the S&P 500 down nearly 3% on Monday, with both major stock indexes notching their worst day of 2019.
Following the yuan’s weakening against the U.S. dollar, the Treasury Department on Monday officially designated China a “currency manipulator, ” the first time an administration has made such a declaration since the Bill Clinton era in the 1990s.
The back-and-forth appeared to abate Tuesday after China’s central bank indicated that it still intends to support of the yuan.