China is reportedly conducting a global diplomatic campaign to oppose President Donald Trump’s new trade deals with US allies. According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, Beijing is trying to reframe itself as a global rules-based order defender and make other countries see Washington as an unreliable trading partner.

The Chinese foreign ministry on Monday, said President Xi Jinping had not spoken to Donald Trump recently, nor were their respective administrations trying to strike a tariff deal. This is in contradiction to the US president’s claim in an interview with Time magazine that he and the Chinese president had spoken.

China and US have been at loggerheads since April 2 when Donald Trump announced a 34 per cent retaliatory tariff on Beijing. A trade war followed, and now US goods imported to China face 125 per cent taxation,