Trump's 'high school' antics with Chinese president scorched by CNN's Jim Sciutto

The U.S. trade war with China seemed to have reached a stalemate Friday, with China calling President Donald Trump's 125 percent tariffs a "joke," then hitting back with the same sky-high rates.

Trump's 125 percent tariffs were issued on top of the standing 20 percent tariffs, bringing the total to 145 percent for Chinese goods.

CNN's Boris Sanchez asked anchor Jim Sciutto about his "perspective" on how the White House was handling the situation, specifically the fact that Trump is demanding Chinese leader Xi Jinping reach out first for a phone call, and not the other way around.

"Can you get any more high school in matters of state? It's ridiculous," Sciutto scoffed, while anchor Brianna Keilar mocked, "He's gotta call me, Jim!"

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Sciutto continued, "The Chinese impression is that they are willing to at least negotiate — not necessarily on Donald Trump's terms — but to talk. But their impression is that the U.S. is not open channels and not made an effort to open up channels to allow that. So, now you have the U.S. president saying, 'Well, you know, I'm not going to open those channels, China has to open them first.' It's kind of ridiculous at the end of the day, because you are playing with the interests of of American consumers, Chinese consumers, et cetera."

Sciutto added that in President Xi's statement, he claimed China would not go higher than 125 percent "because this is getting a little ridiculous."

"That's both a signal to say we're not going to get caught up in this tit-for-tat to the degreethat the president is, but it's also an opening to say, okay, we're are capping this for now, and that perhaps offers a way forward that we could begin talking about how to bring these down," Sciutto said.

He added that China doesn't want to be seen as "kowtowing" to the West, "so, the browbeating is not a great diplomatic strategy."

Watch the clip below or at this link.