Iran Press/America: US President Donald Trump in an interview with Fox Bussiness once again repeated allegations towards China over handling the coronavirus.
The Trump administration has been mulling avenues to retaliate what they conceive as Chinese mishandling of the pandemic through seeking financial compensation on claims of what it sees as withholding information about the virus.
US President Donald Trump also raised the impact of ending relations with China.
Trump and his team used other tactics to demonstrate displeasure with they perceive as China's mishandling of the case. On Monday, the US administration cut investment ties between US federal retirement funds and Chinese equities.
In a letter obtained exclusively by Fox Business, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and Trump's Top Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow wrote on Monday to US Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia that the White House does not want the Thrift Savings Plan which is a federal employee retirement fund to have money invested in Chinese equities that numbers about $4 billion in assets.
While US intelligence agencies said the virus did not appear to be manmade or genetically modified, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said early in May there is "a significant amount of evidence" the virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan.
His comments followed Trump's assertion on April 30 that he was confident the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese virology lab.
Tensions escalated between China and the United States on Thursday, with Beijing hitting back at a reference to COVID-19 as the “plague from China” and Washington’s allegation that Chinese hackers were targeting coronavirus research.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian described the latest US allegations as “smears” that would not help to combat the crisis.
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