Trump: ‘All of the Fools’ Focused on Russia Should Start Looking at China, Too
President Donald Trump on Saturday pointed the finger at the foreign country he considers America’s real threat, calling those who fail to perceive the danger “fools.”
“All of the fools that are so focused on looking only at Russia should start also looking in another direction, China,” Trump tweeted. “But in the end, if we are smart, tough and well prepared, we will get along with everyone!”
One expert said Trump’s China policy has veered away from the Obama-era approach of trying to use multi-national agreements to become China’s friend into a more direct bilateral competition.
“I do not see very many issues this administration is trying to work with China on,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“The effort to come up with new things where our interests converge has been abandoned. I think this administration is in agreement that China is a competitor, and the effort here is really focused on how we have a more effective competitive strategy with China,” she said, according to The Washington Post.
Trump’s style of hardball may be producing results.
Later this week, a delegation of Chinese officials will come to Washington to resume talks with U.S. officials on issues related to trade, China’s commerce ministry said in a statement, according to Forbes.
“The Chinese side reiterated that it opposes unilateralism and trade protectionism and does not accept any unilateral trade restrictions,” the statement said.
The talks will take place Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, a new round of tariffs against China is scheduled to take effect.
China’s renewed interest in talks comes amid reports that the country’s economy is taking a hit from its duel with Trump.
“The Chinese government, in its totality, must not underestimate President Trump’s toughness and willingness to continue this battle to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers and quotas, to stop the theft of intellectual property and to stop the forced transfer of technology,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Thursday on CNBC. “Those are the asks that we’ve been making now for quite some time.”
Steven W. Mosher, who authored the book, “Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order,” wrote in a commentary piece for Fox News that Trump may have derailed a Chinese economy pundits thought was unstoppable.
“Under the Trump administration, the American economy is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the over-regulation, over-taxation and bad trade deals that had threatened to suffocate it,” he wrote.
“China’s economic growth, on the other hand, is slowing under the burden of an aging population, massive corruption, unproductive investment and excessive debt. Add to this the growing risk that Chinese products will be gradually pushed out of their major export market – the United States – and you have the risk of a full-blown economic meltdown in China,” he wrote.
Or, as Michael Walsh wrote in a New York Post column published Saturday, Trump is using the economy like a weapon.
” … the Trump administration has apparently decided upon a new and smarter way to fight: employing resurgent American economic power in the forms of tariffs, sanctions and trade deals,” he wrote.
“Once convinced the US would never start a trade war, the Chinese now understand that Trump’s constant railing against their currency manipulation and unfair trading practices has been serious all along — and now he’s put some economic muscle where his mouth is,” Walsh added.
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