BEIJING: Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma said the company no longer plans to create one million jobs in the United States due to the U.S.-China trade conflict, China’s news agency Xinhua reported.
Ma had met U.S. President Donald Trump two years ago and laid out the Chinese e-commerce giant’s plan to bring one million small U.S. businesses onto its platform to sell to Chinese consumers over the next five years.
“This commitment is based on friendly China-US cooperation and the rational and objective premise of bilateral trade,” Ma told Xinhua. “The current situation has already destroyed the original premise. There is no way to deliver the promise.”
Ma said on Tuesday that trade tensions between the United States and China could last for two decades and would be “a mess” for all parties involved.
Trump on Monday imposed 10 percent tariffs on about US$200 billion worth of imports from China, and threatened duties on about US$267 billion more if China retaliated against the U.S. action.
China responded a day later with tariffs on about US$60 billion worth of U.S. goods as previously planned, but reduced the level of tariffs that it will collect on the products. --REUTERS