Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Chinese retail giant Alibaba, says the company no longer plans to create 1 million jobs in the United States in the wake of the ongoing trade conflict between the U.S. and China.
Ma made his original job creation pronouncement during a high-profile meeting with Donald Trump in January 2017 before Trump's inauguration as president.
"The promise was made on the premise of friendly US-China partnership and rational trade relations," Ma told Chinese news site Xinhua on Wednesday. "That premise no longer exists today, so our promise cannot be fulfilled."
Ma, who recently announced that he will step down as Alibaba chairman within a year, added that the company would "not stop working hard to contribute to the healthy development of China-US trade."
Ma's comments come on the heels of a new round of tariffs this week from both China and the U.S. that will affect billions of dollars worth of goods as the two countries have failed to reach a deal to resolve the Trump administration's concerns about China's trade practices.
At an Alibaba investor conference on Tuesday, Ma also called the trade frictions a "mess" that could have decadeslong ramifications.
Experts have said that Ma's promise to enable 1 million American small businesses and farmers to sell their goods on the Alibaba platform over the next five years was lofty to begin with.
