US President Donald Trump said on Friday he views the Phase 1 trade deal inked between the United States and China differently in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic

"I guess I view the trade deal a little bit differently than I did three months ago," Trump said at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

"Getting along with China would be a good thing. I don't know if that's going to happen. I'll let you know," he added.

"COVID-19 is a gift from China. Not good, they should have stopped it at the source. A very bad gift. How come, Wuhan where it started was in a very bad trouble, but it did not go to any other parts of China," remarked Trump at the White House Rose Garden.

"China has taken tremendous advantage of the United States, we helped rebuild China, we gave them $500 billion a year. How stupid are the people who represented our country with China and many other countries. But that's all changing," Trump further said.

On the COVID-19 vaccine front, Trump said, "We had a meeting on vaccines yesterday, we are doing incredibly well. We can have some very positive surprises. Tremendous progress is being made on vaccines."

Trump took a victory lap Friday morning after the government reported surprising job gains for last month, seizing on the data to predict that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic disruption was in the rear-view mirror.

The unemployment rate dropped to a better-than-expected 13.3%, but that is still on par with what the nation witnessed during the Great Depression.

Trump spoke from the Rose Garden hours after the Labour Department said that U.S. employers added 2.5 million workers to their payrolls last month. Economists had been expecting them instead to slash another 8 million jobs amid the ongoing fallout from the response to the pandemic.

“This shows that what we’ve been doing is right," Trump said of the jobs numbers. "This is outstanding what’s happened today."

Trump pitched himself as key to what he claimed would be a “Rocket Ship" economic rebound, and offered that as an argument for his re-election in November. “I’m telling you next year, unless something happens or the wrong people get in here, this will turn around," Trump said.