NEW YORK, June 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to escalate a trade conflict with China is likely a negotiating tactic and not a “suicide pact,” the chief executive of Goldman Sachs & Co said on Tuesday, adding it was not a strategy that he supports.
“I don’t know if this is going to be the pattern of North Korea - a lot of bluster. I don’t know that we’re in a suicide pact on this. I suspect that we are not going to cause the economies to collapse,” Lloyd Blankfein, the Wall Street bank’s CEO, said after China vowed to retaliate against Trump’s threat of a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods.
“I do think that ... this is kind of a negotiating tactic. That would be my best” guess, Blankfein told the Economic Club of New York. “This would not have been the course that I would have done, it would not be what I would recommend.”
Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Will Dunham
