House Democrat: Trump trade truce with China ‘just a charade’

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Monday dismissed the Trump administration’s three-month trade truce with China as “just a charade.”

“We are back where we were before all of this chaos, all of this turmoil, and it is just a reflection that there’s no plan here,” Goldman told CNN’s John Berman. “Nothing is actually going to come from this other than continued higher prices and uncertainty, instability and a pullback in our economy.”

“This is all just a charade — there’s no objective to this,” he added.

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have hailed the 90-day pause in reciprocal tariff hikes as a major win, following trade negotiations with China in Geneva over the weekend.

Negotiations for a long-term agreement between the U.S. and China are expected to continue, Bessent said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday, but he noted that details are still being hashed out. The tariff escalation began after Trump launched his “Liberation Day” tariffs last month.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he expects to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of the week.

“They were very happy to be able to do something with us and the relationship is very, very good,” he said.

Trump has called for a resurgence in American manufacturing as another top aim of his sweeping tariff overhaul.

But Goldman, who was first elected in 2022 to represent the lower Manhattan district that includes New York City’s Chinatown, and other Democratic critics have largely waved that off as a lofty aspiration.

“Even if we do, that’s going to take years, so the whole ostensible purpose of this makes no sense at all because it’s just impractical,” Goldman said on CNN. “It’s just Donald Trump’s ego and wanting to fight with Xi Jinping and show that he’s bigger until he realizes he got his bluff called and he has nowhere to go; so then he just caves and goes back.”