US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters / Yuri Gripas.

US President Donald Trump denied on Wednesday that the United States was in a trade war with China, hours after Beijing slapped tariffs on a list of US imports in retaliation for similar duties levied by the White House one day earlier.

“We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US,” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter.