Trump says he'll demand China pays 'substantial figure' over virus outbreak

also said Monday that his administration are conducting "serious investigations" into the actions they can take against Beijing.

Trump made the statement on MondayCredit: EPA

In recent weeks, China has come under increased scrutiny for withholding early reports of the outbreak in Wuhan, despite official claims from Beijing that the country had been "transparent and responsible” since the virus first appeared.

During his press conference in the Rose Gardens at , Trump said: "There are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable.

"We're doing very serious investigations, as you probably know. And we are not happy with . We are not happy with that whole situation.

"Because we believe it could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn't have spread all over the world."

Trump's comments came as:

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After being questioned by a reporter about a newspaper's alleged "" of $160 billion to China for " damage", he replied: "We could do something much easier than that.

"We're doing very serious investigations," he said.Credit: AP:Associated Press

"We have ways of doing things a lot easier than that.

"Germany's looking at things, and we're looking at things, and we're talking about a lot more money than Germany's talking about.

"We haven't determined the final amount yet. It's very substantial.

"If you look at the world, I mean, this is worldwide damage. This is damage to the , but this is damage to the world."

Trump plans to demand that China pay a "very substantial figure" for the coronavirus outbreakCredit: AP:Associated Press

In January, Trump relaxed some of the tariffs he'd imposed on China during the trade war in exchange for Beijing agreeing to buy more American products as part of a wider trade deal.

Retaliatory tariffs from China had particularly hit American farmers, who needed government bailout money to get through the trade war.

Speaking about the country's financial relationship with China before the outbreak, Trump said: "If you look prior to this virus, the deficit was coming way down under my administration because I put massive tariffs on China.

"We took in tens of billions of dollars, gave some of it to the farmers who were unfairly targeted by China.

"Nobody's ever done that before. We never took in 10 cents from China.

"We never took in 10 cents from China", Trump added.Credit: EPA

"Now all of a sudden, I think you know very well, we've taken in tens of billions of dollars.

"I helped the farmers by giving them, two years ago, $12 billion – all coming from China. And we had plenty left over, too.

"And then the following year, $16 billion, and this year we're also going to help our farmers."

Although Trump has been quick to blame China for the outbreak, he has so far been reluctant to impose any real-world penalties on the country so as not to jeopardize his trade deal with Beijing - one of the crown jewels of his re-election effort.

The lack of action from the White House comes despite a push from Republicans in recent weeks for the president to over the outbreak.