Trump mulls executive orders on China, manufacturing, immigration: Aide

US President Donald Trump is purportedly considering several executive orders targeting China as well as manufacturing and immigration, amid heightening tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, broke the news at a press briefing on Monday, declining to provide further details.

"It's dealing with a number of executive orders that may go all the way from dealing with some of the immigration issues that we have before us, to some of the manufacturing and jobs issues that are before us, and ultimately dealing with China, in what we need to do there in terms of resetting that balance," Meadows said.

The chief of staff earlier said in an interview with Fox News that the White House was pushing forward with some of its top priorities after stalling in Congress.

“We're going to get them done when Congress couldn't get them done,” Meadows said, adding that the orders would demonstrate “business that actually goes forward from the Oval Office when Congress doesn't act.”

Since taking office in 2017, Trump has tried to terminate a program that blocks the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the United States illegally after entering as children — a group often called “Dreamers.”

Last month, the US Supreme Court blocked Trump’s effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy initiated by former President Barack Obama, which protects roughly 649,000 immigrants from deportation.

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Moreover, the US has been beset by economic fallout since the new coronavirus broke out across the country in early January, which led to a vast shutdown of businesses.

The viral disease, COVID-19, has killed more Americans than during the US Korean War, Vietnam War and the US war in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 combined.

The Trump administration has been under fire for mishandling the respiratory disease, with critics saying thousands of lives could have been saved if Washington had implemented lockdowns and social distancing measures earlier.

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Washington has invariably blamed China for the generation of the virus and its ensuing impact on the US economy, calling for reparations to compensate for the loss.

The epidemiological crisis came against the backdrop of protracted trade dispute between Washington and Beijing over hefty tariffs on imported goods and commodities from China.

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President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed his threat to cut ties with China.

Trump has imposed unusually extortionate tariffs on imports from China since 2018, seeking extensive structural changes from Beijing and alleging that it had engaged in intellectual property theft over many years, which China strongly denies.

Since then, the world's two largest economies have exchanged tariffs on more than 360 billion dollars in two-way trade.

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