U.S. President Donald Trump took a sudden swipe at France on Monday during an interview with US broadcaster Fox News, saying “we’ve had a lot of problems with the French.”

Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham questioned the US president on the enrolment of Chinese students at US universities, saying, “they’re not the French, they’re the Chinese. They spy on us. They steal our intellectual property.”

But Trump abruptly cut in to respond, saying: “Do you think the French are better, really? I will tell you, I’m not so sure.”

Trump, who has been locked in a trade war with Beijing, has had a well-catalogued hands-on relationship with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, full of muscular handshakes, mutual backslapping and knee-touching for the cameras.

Macron in September even rang the US

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