Officials in the United States, across multiple government agencies, are expected to meet on Thursday (local times) to chalk out a strategy for seeking retaliatory measures against China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Washington Post reported citing officials.
This comes against the background of US President Donald Trump's continuous attack against China, blaming it for withholding information about the virus and allowing it to spread around the world.
According to the Washington Post, US officials are discussing the possibility of stripping China of its "sovereign immunity," aiming to enable the U.S. government or victims to sue China for damages.
George Sorial, who formerly served as a top executive at the Trump Orgsation and is involved in a class-action lawsuit against China, told The Washington Post he and senior White House officials have discussed limiting China's sovereign immunity.
Trump has also indicated that he is thinking about "levying extreme penalties" on China.
When asked about it on Thursday, Trump said: "You start playing those games and that's tough." He said cancelling interest payments to China could undermine the "sanctity of the dollar," but he added that there were other ways to levy extreme penalties on China, such as raising USD 1 trillion by imposing tariffs on Chinese imports.
Coronavirus which first emerged in China has so far has infected more than 3.2 million people and killed at least 233,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US has emerged as the worst-hit country in the world with 1 million Covid-19 cases and at least 63,000 deaths.
Administration officials have signalled that many of the discussions are preliminary and that little formal work has begun on turning these initial ideas into reality.
Other officials have warned Trump against the push to punish China, saying the country is sending supplies to help the American response.
"Now is just not the right time," one senior administration official involved in the talks said. "There will be a time to do it."
"Punishing China is definitely where the President's head is at right now," one senior adviser said.
On Monday, Trump said that the US will be going to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in damages from China, adding that he is considering additional measures to punish Beijing.
"We can do something much easier than that," Trump said in response to a question about demanding financial compensation from Beijing. "We have ways of doing things a lot easier than that."
In retaliation to this, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, told reporters that the US should know that their enemy is a virus and such rhetoric has no legal basis.
"The U.S. should know that their enemy is the virus, not China. They should focus on containment at home and international cooperation, instead of smearing China and shifting the blame onto China," Geng said
"As for punishment or accountability, as I have repeatedly stated, such rhetoric has no legal basis, and there's no international precedent. At this time, undermining others' efforts will end up undermining oneself," he added.
( With inputs from ANI )