VANCE: What the President has said is that if Kamala Harris believes that climate change is serious, they would be doing more manufacturing and more energy production in the US, and that's not what they're doing. The real issue is that if you're spending billions of dollars of American taxpayer money on solar panels that are made in China, you're going to make the economy dirtier. We should be making more of those solar panels here in the US. p>WALZ: We are. In Minnesota.
VANCE: Some of them are, Tim, but a lot of them are being made overseas in China, especially the components that go into those solar panels. So if you really want to make the environment cleaner, you've got to invest in more energy production. We built [only one] nuclear facility in the past 40 years. Natural gas--invest more in it. Kamala Harris has done the opposite.
WALZ: We are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have. We're also producing more clean energy.
WALZ: I got the opportunity in the summer of '89 to travel to China, and we would go back and forth to China. And I'm a knucklehead at times...I learned a lot about China. I hear the critiques of this. I would make the case that Donald Trump should have come on one of those trips with us. I guarantee you he wouldn't be praising Xi Jinping about COVID. And I guarantee you he wouldn't start a trade war that he ends up losing. So this is about trying to understand the world.
Q: The question was, can you explain the discrepancy?
WALZ: No. All I said on this was, is, I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, that's what I've said. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest.
VANCE: Experts for 40 years said that if we shipped our manufacturing base off to China, we'd get cheaper goods. They were wrong. Donald Trump said "we're not doing it anymore; we're bringing American manufacturing back."
WALZ: We need to have fair trading partners. That's something that we believe in. I think the thing that most concerns me on this is, is Donald Trump was the guy who created the largest trade deficit in American history with China. So the rhetoric is good. Much of what the senator said right there, I'm in agreement with him on this. I watched it happen, too. I watched it in my communities and we talked about that.
VANCE: So, appreciate that. So if you notice, what Governor Walz just did is he said, "First of all, Donald Trump has to listen to the experts." And then when he acknowledged that the experts screwed up, he said, well, "Donald Trump didn't do nearly as good of a job as the statistics show that he did."
WALZ: No, that's a gross generalization.
The letter criticizes Trump for praising "adversarial dictators" including China's Xi Jinping, North Korea's Kim Jung-un, and Russia's Vladimir Putin, "as well as the terrorist leaders of Hezbollah," while denigrating the U.S.
"The contrast with Mr. Trump is clear: where Vice President Harris is prepared and strategic, he is impulsive and ill-informed. We do not agree on everything, but we all adhere to two fundamental principles," the letter said. "First, we believe America's national security requires a serious and capable Commander-in-Chief. Second, we believe American democracy is invaluable."
"Our endorsement of Harris is an endorsement of freedom and an act of patriotism. It is an endorsement of democratic ideals and of relentless optimism in America's future."
TRUMP: Let me just tell you about world leaders. Viktor Orban--Prime Minister of Hungary. They said, "why is the whole world blowing up? Three years ago it wasn't. Why is it blowing up?" He said, "Because you need Trump back as president. They were afraid of him. China was afraid." And I don't like to use the word afraid but I'm just quoting him. He said, "the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president."
HARRIS: It is very well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy. It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on day one according to himself. It is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they're so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favors. And that is why so many military leaders who you have worked with have told me you are a disgrace.
TRUMP: They aren't gonna have higher prices what's gonna have and who's gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years. I charge, I was the only president ever China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries and you know if she doesn't like 'em they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tariffs but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration.
HARRIS: Well, let's be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we've ever seen in the history of America. He invited trade wars, you wanna talk about his deal with China what he ended up doing is under Donald Trump's presidency he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military.
DONALD TRUMP: First of all, I have no sales tax. That's an incorrect statement. She knows that. We're doing tariffs on other countries. Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we've done for the world. And the tariff will be substantial in some cases. I took in billions and billions of dollars, as you know, from China. In fact, they never took the tariff off because it was so much money, they can't. I had tariffs and yet I had no inflation. Look, we've had a terrible economy because inflation is really known as a country buster. It breaks up countries. We were at 21%. But many things are 80% higher than they were just a few years ago.
TRUMP: They aren't gonna have higher prices what's gonna have and who's gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years. I charge, I was the only president ever China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries and you know if she doesn't like 'em they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tariffs but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration.
HARRIS: Well, let's be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we've ever seen in the history of America. He invited trade wars, you wanna talk about his deal with China what he ended up doing is under Donald Trump's presidency he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military.
TRUMP: That didn't happen under Donald Trump. Let me just tell you, they lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs this last month. They're all leaving. They're building big auto plants in Mexico. In many cases owned by China. They're building these massive plants, and they think they're going to sell their cars into the United States because of these people. What they have given to China is unbelievable. But we're not going to let that. We'll put tariffs on those cars so they can't come into our country. Because they will kill the United Auto Workers and any auto worker, whether it's in Detroit or South Carolina or any other place.
While he has not yet committed to a single policy, the ex-president has typically proposed raising tariffs by 10%, or by 60% on goods imported from China, up from approximately 1% and 11% now, respectively.
Goldman Sachs economists projected prices on consumer goods would go up by 0.1% for every percentage increase in the effective tariff rate and raise inflation rates for one year, noting that in addition to the price of imported goods going up, it's also likely the price of domestic goods would increase, because U.S. manufacturers would "opportunistically" raise their prices to take advantage of having less competition in the marketplace.
That was apparent when Vance said that if mainland China attacked Taiwan, the US would lose a lot of chips and new technologies "that are necessary to power the modern economy". "We can't let the Chinese walk into Taiwan," Vance said.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary, and most countries do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state. These include the United States, though it is opposed to any forcible change to the status quo and is bound by law to provide arms to Taiwan for its defence. The US started to limit exports of semiconductors to China during the Trump administration to curb Beijing's hi-tech development, which Washington saw as a threat to its defence.
He has sought to put significant blame on China for greenhouse gas emissions. In a 2023 hearing, Vance dismissed carbon offsets in aviation as "climate reparations": "Why are we effectively penalizing the American aviation while we don't require, or even attempt, to force the Chinese to do the same to their aviation industry?"
Vance last year introduced the "Drive American Act," S. 2962, which would repeal the federal tax credit for electric vehicles and instead offer tax credits for U.S.-made vehicles powered only by gasoline or diesel.
TRUMP: It's not going to drive them higher. It's just going to force them to pay us a lot of money, and reduce our deficit tremendously.
BIDEN: But these 10% tariffs [on] everything coming into the country, you know what the economists say? That's going to cost the average American $2,500 a year and more, because they're going to have to pay the difference in food and all the things that are very important.
TRUMP: This guy never took out my tariffs because we bring in so much money with the tariffs that I imposed on China. He never took them away. He can't because it's too much money. It's tremendous. And we saved our steel industries. And there was more to come, but he hasn't done that. But he hasn't cut the tariffs because he can't, because it's too much money.
[See FactCheck that indeed Biden has kept Trump's tariffs]
(Politico.com 5/15/24) "Back in 2018, lawmakers of both parties greeted Trump's decision to slap tariffs on Chinese imports with widespread derision. Six years later, most members of Congress are applauding Biden's extension--and in some cases, expansion--of those tariffs. The contrasting reactions to similar policy moves is yet another reminder of just how much the political consensus has shifted against free trade. Biden's administration spent much of his term debating what to do with the duties Trump put on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese imports, before finally announcing that he will increase Trump-era duties on steel, aluminum and clean energy products from China, including quadrupling tariffs on electric vehicles, while keeping the rest in place.
(TaxFoundation.org, "Who Really Pays the Tariffs?," Dec. 15, 2021): "When the Trump administration imposed tariffs on various imports in 2018, the stated purpose was to boost U.S. industries and punish foreign exporters. But rather than hurting foreign exporters, the economic evidence shows it is American firms and consumers hardest hit by the Trump tariffs. The tariffs resulted in higher prices for a wide variety of goods that U.S. consumers and businesses purchase."
TRUMP: It's not going to drive them higher. It's just going to cause countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China--and many others, in all fairness to China--it's going to just force them to pay us a lot of money, reduce our deficit tremendously, and give us a lot of power for other things.
BIDEN: But this tariff--these 10 percent tariffs, everything coming into the country, you know what the economists say? That's going to cost the average American $2,500 a year and more, because they're going to have to pay the difference in food and all the things that are very important. You have not, in fact, made any progress with China. We are [now, under the Biden administration, at] the lowest trade deficit with China since 2010.
[See FactCheck that economists agree that tariffs on China will increase consumer prices].
"Hillbilly Elegy" describes the impact of globalization on Cincinnati, where many of the once-plentiful steel and other factory jobs had moved offshore and left a community struggling economically and with substance abuse issues. "I think the most important lesson is that America is like a house, and the foundation of that house is our own people and our own manufacturing base; we've allowed that industrial base to atrophy," Vance said. "Until that foundation is repaired, I don't want to hear about us being the policeman of the world."
That means "putting more people to work, rebuilding our industrial base, building more stuff, producing more of the things we can rely on--is a better use of American dollars."
FactCheck (CNN June 11, 2024): A federal jury has convicted Hunter Biden on all three federal felony gun charges he faced, concluding that he violated laws meant to prevent drug addicts from owning firearms. The conviction marks the first time a president's immediate family member has been found guilty of a crime during their father's term in office, though his crimes predate Joe Biden's tenure as president. The jury returned guilty verdicts on all three charges, which stemmed from a revolver Hunter Biden bought in October 2018.
The way to freedom is an America that is proud and secure in its place in the world, unflinching in the face of tyranny, slow to anger, quick to aid its allies, but always willing to extend the hand of diplomacy to anyone who will take it in good faith.
HALEY: Great win for the Taiwanese election. And it happened on the heels of China doing incredible amounts of intimidation with drone tactics, with trying to spread misinformation. So it really was a win for freedom and democracy. A setback for China for sure.
Q: [Should we help Taiwan with troops, or just money and supplies like in Ukraine?]
HALEY: I don't think that we should ever give cash to any country, friend or foe, because you can't follow it, you can't hold it accountable. Really important. The second thing is we don't need to put troops on the ground anywhere. As the spouse of a military combat veteran, you don't ever want to see your loved ones go to war. But what you do have to do is deter it. There's a reason the Taiwanese want the U.S. and the West to support Ukraine. Because they know if Ukraine wins, China won't invade Taiwan.
HALEY (on DeSantisLies.com): DeSantis long opposed ethanol before he decided to run for president. In 2015, DeSantis introduced legislation to repeal the Renewable Fuel Standard, and cosponsored five pieces of legislation to repeal it.
DESANTIS: I supported Trump's policy vis-a-vis Russia & Ukraine, and it was successful. You know, the Biden policy has not been. But, Nikki Haley is basically a carbon copy of what Biden is. It's an open-ended commitment. They want another $108 billion. We need to find a way to end this. But, we also have to look at what's the top threat to this country. It's the Chinese Communist Party. We are not doing what we need to do to have adequate hard power in the Indo-Pacific... I'm a Navy guy. We need more sea power. We're going to build that up and we're going to have a strategy to deny their ability to invade Taiwan or to get beyond the first island chain. On the current course, they're going to take advantage of Biden.
Fact Check by Human Rights Watch, 8/4/22: Viktor Orban has become the darling of certain political circles in the US. Since 2012, Orban hijacked public institutions, attacked the independence of courts, and left almost no independent media standing. He has attacked the rights of LGBT and transgender people, and banned same-sex unions. He encouraged ruthless and rights-abusing treatment of migrants and refugees and the criminalization of those who help them. Orban's adherence to the racist "great replacement" theory risks emboldening white supremacists.
HALEY: China is our number one national security threat. I fought them every single day at the U.N. The first thing we have to do is we have to make sure we stop selling them any land and we take back the land they already purchased. We need to go to our universities and we say, "you either take Chinese money or you take American money but the days of taking both are over." We need to stop all of the technologies that are going to China. Biden approved 70% of them. Trump approved even more than that. We have to tell them we're going to end all normal trade relations with them until they stop murdering Americans with fentanyl. But the biggest thing, [for] China in terms of trade, we will move that trade to where we have friends. We will go and build partnerships, India, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia, Israel. We will go and move that trade over.
Republican presidential candidates such as Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis are calling for the doctrine's reinvigoration to take aim at China's growing presence in Latin America and are offering it as a justification for a potential U.S. military attack on criminal organizations in Mexico. They are following the lead of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who hailed Monroe on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, as well as advisors such as John Bolton and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Anticipating renewed great-power rivalry, this time with China, the seeming simplicity and persistence of the Monroe Doctrine mean that it has regained adherents in the US.
[Many Republicans] are following the lead of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who hailed Monroe on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly [to keep China out of Latin America]. Many Biden administration initiatives are perceived in Latin America in a similar light. Top US officials rarely make time for Latin America beyond issues related to immigration and drug trafficking, and the US' economic offerings to the region are seen as paltry compared to its commitments elsewhere. When Biden officials hector Latin Americans on the dangers of economic engagement with China, the warnings are heard as modern echoes of Monroe's quip that the United States knows best.
Republican presidential candidates such as Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis are calling for the doctrine's reinvigoration to take aim at China's growing presence in Latin America and are offering it as a justification for a potential U.S. military attack on criminal organizations in Mexico. They are following the lead of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who hailed Monroe on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, as well as advisors such as John Bolton and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Anticipating renewed great-power rivalry, this time with China, the seeming simplicity and persistence of the Monroe Doctrine mean that it has regained adherents in the US.
We've got to get the foreign infiltration out of our country, whether it's in our schools, whether it's on our social media, whether it's we need to stop all foreign lobbying that's happening to members of Congress, and we need to start America again. Until we do that, we are going to be at threats.
We've got to look at, Iran, China and Russia want to destroy the West. We have to start acting strong again. We've got to start protecting Americans. Right now, Americans don't feel protected, and we're not doing anything to strengthen it. So, Joe Biden continues to be a problem, that'll change on election day.
Chris Christie: She said that Donald Trump was good on trade; he wasn't. And the proof that he wasn't good on trade with China is that all he did was impose tariffs, which raised the prices for every American. You want to know what has contributed to inflation in this country? Yes, it's more government spending. Yes, it's the fact that we're printing too much money. Absolutely. But it is also the increase in prices that were driven by Donald Trump's tariffs. And one last thing, you can't say he was good on trade because he didn't trade. He didn't change one Chinese policy in the process. He failed on it.
Ron DeSantis: We will be able to deter that from happening. We have longstanding American policy [known as "strategic ambiguity," where the US doesn't promise to send US troops to Taiwan, or not--OTI], and we will follow that.
Chris Christie: I want to be really clear: if China went after Taiwan, you're absolutely right, I would, as president, have us go militarily and defend them.
Vivek Ramaswamy: I'm going to respectfully disagree with Ron here. At least for the foreseeable future, the US will absolutely defend Taiwan. The reason why we're not doing it for China, is because we're scared, because we depend on them for our modern way of life.
Christie: I'm not afraid based upon those economic relationships to do that because these economic relationships mean nothing. If what's going to happen is that China is going to come and act in that region of the world however they see fit.
Haley: No, I was not saying it's time to bomb Iran. But I dealt with Iran every day when I was at the United Nations and they only respond to strength. What they don't respond to is when you weaken the sanctions like they did on Iran that allowed China to send them billions to fill their proxies, what they don't respond to is when you give $6 billion for five hostages, that only makes them want more hostages. What they don't respond to is when they do 140 strikes on our men and women in Syria and Iraq and we do nothing but just some small shots back. You've got to punch them, you've got to punch them hard and let them know that, that's the only way they're going to respond. So the way you do that is you go after their infrastructure in Syria and Iraq where they're hitting our soldiers.
Ron DeSantis: We will be able to deter that from happening.
Q [to Ramaswamy]: You said, if you want to stop Xi from invading Taiwan, "Let's open a branch of the NRA in Taiwan and put an AR-15 in the hands of every family and train them how to use it." Is this a serious policy proposal?
Vivek Ramaswamy: Well, it's part of a broader deterrence strategy, and so, I think I'm going to respectfully disagree with Ron here. I think the next U.S. president needs to be crystal clear that at least for the foreseeable future, the U.S. will absolutely defend Taiwan, and it is with that clarity that we actually achieve deterrence. But I have a broader strategy than that. I also do believe the Second Amendment is a critical way of preventing foreign autocrats from [action]. So, it is part of a broader strategy, but I do think that we need to be specific about our deterrence strategy.
If China pulled the rug out from under us tomorrow, would we be ready? Think about what happened during COVID. Everybody told you to wear a mask, they were made in China. Everything that happened, if you go to the drugstore, all those medicines are made in China. We have to make sure that we are not relying on China for anything related to our national security, which means let's start focusing on doing deals with our friends now.
Ron DeSantis: We will be able to deter that from happening. I think that's the important thing, we need a strategy of denial so that we're deterring [China's President] Xi's ambitions.
Q: What if it doesn't work?
DeSantis: It's going to work. Taiwan's an ally. We have longstanding American policy [known as "strategic ambiguity," where the US doesn't promise to send US troops to Taiwan, or not-- OTI], and we will follow that. But here's the thing, Taiwan is important because if China's able to break out of this first island chain, they're going to dominate commerce in the entire Indo-Pacific. They will use that to export authoritarianism all around the world, including here in the US. Deterring China's ambitions is the number one national security task that I will do as president and we will succeed. The 21st century needs to be an American century. We cannot let it be a Chinese century.
Gov. Christie: Let's remember the last time that we turned our back on a shooting war in Europe. It bought us just a couple of years and then 500,000 Americans were killed in Europe to defeat Hitler. This is not a choice. This is the price we pay for being the leaders of the free world. And the fact is this alliance is not just with Russia and China. Iran is in the middle of this as well, and so is North Korea. And the reason they're doing it is because dictators work together. People who believe in democracy work together. We must stand with all of those that are standing up for democracy and freedom in this world. And let's remind everybody of this: In 1992, this country made a promise to Ukraine. We said if you return nuclear missiles that were part of the old Soviet Union to Russia and they invade you, we will protect you. An American promise that's 31 years old--we need to stand by it.
Chris Christie: Make sure that we continue to isolate Iran, work with the reasonable nations in the Middle East, the other Arab nations who want to partner with you and make sure that we continue to isolate Iran so that their only friends in the world are the part of the evil foursome, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
RAMASWAMY: We got the hell out of there. And when I started my next company, Strive, to compete against BlackRock [a foreign-owned company operating in China], I made a commitment that we would never do business in China. We need to declare independence from China, and I will say that through.
And at the core of all that is energy policy, because China imports 10 million barrels of oil a day. They're the largest import in the world. And we have had four Cabinet members from the Biden administration there this summer, and none of them talked about U.S. energy.
The first one to go to each of those countries was [Climate Envoy John] Kerry to talk about the folly of the climate policy, which is making the world less stable. It's empowering dictators. It's not about climate change that we need to be worried about. It's about the Biden climate policies that are actually the existential threat to America's future.
China controls 85% of the Rare Earth minerals. They're called Rare Earth, because they're measured in parts per million. China is moving 100,000 pounds of Earth, in Indonesia, in Africa. They're literally destroying the planet, so that we can make a battery that's in a car, subsidized here. That's why they're striking, because they need two-thirds less workers to build an electric car. This strike is at Joe Biden's feet.
Gov. Ron DESANTIS (R-FL): We are not going to have a blank check.
Sen. Tim SCOTT (R-SC): By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer, and reduce if not eliminate an attack on NATO territories.
Vivek RAMASWAMY: China is the real enemy. And we're driving Russia further into China's arms. We have to level with the American people on this issue. The reality is just because Putin is an evil dictator does not mean that Ukraine is good. This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties...
Gov. Nikki HALEY (R-SC): A win for Russia is a win for China.
RAMASWAMY: That is not true.
HALEY: But I forgot; you like China.
RAMASWAMY: Nope. The Communist China of Party is the real enemy. We're driving Russia into China's arms. We need a reasonable peace plan to end this. [Ukraine's] president just last week was hailing a Nazi in his own ranks.
Gov. Ron DESANTIS [R-FL]: We're not going to get it back.
SCOTT: It's not actually going to be paid by Ukraine. It's paid our NATO allies. Our national vital interests is in degrading the Russian military. By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer.
Vivek RAMASWAMY [R-OH]: China is the real enemy. And we're driving Russia further into China's arms. Just because Putin is an evil dictator does not mean that Ukraine is good.
Gov. Nikki HALEY (R-SC): A win for Russia is a win for China.
RAMASWAMY: Nope. The Communist China of Party is the real enemy. We need a reasonable peace plan to end this.
PENCE: Vivek, if you let Putin have Ukraine, that's a green light to China to take Taiwan. Peace comes through strength.
RAMASWAMY: The Communist China of Party is the real enemy.
CHRISTIE: No, they're all connected. The Chinese are paying for the Russian war in Ukraine. The Iranians are supplying more sophisticated weapons.
I understand people want to go and talk to Putin. Guess what? So did George W. Bush. So did Barack Obama. So did Donald Trump. And so did Joe Biden. Every one of them has been wrong.
We need to say right now that the Chinese-Russian alliance is something we have to fight against. And we are not going to solve it by cuddling up to Vladimir Putin. Putin is murdering people in his own country; he's now going to Ukraine to murder innocent civilians. And if you think that's where it's going to stop, if we give him any of Ukraine, next will be Poland. Putin in 1991 said that the darkest moment in world history when the Soviet Union fell. Listen, everybody, he wants to put the old band back together. And only America can stop it. And when I'm president, we will.
DESANTIS: No. I think you look at how our societies developed, they have huge amount of power over our society. They've cracked down on free speech. We're not saying you don't want them to do business, but you want with it to be a free market. And right now, they're monopolies. But this issue of China is really going to be fundamental. We have subcontracted out so much of our national needs to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. We rely on them for a whole host of issues. We need to reshore, and we need to decouple all those important industries. We need to get that back in the United States. They are our top geopolitical adversary by a country mile. [Chinese President] Xi Jinping's got huge ambitions not only in the Asian-Pacific, but as you mentioned earlier, in our region. But ultimately, we've got to beat them on the economy.
RAMASWAMY: The Republican Party [needs to] reach the next generation of young Americans where they are. [And we should] declare independence from China.
HALEY: This is infuriating because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have. 150 million people are on TikTok. That means [China] can get your contacts. They can get your financial information. They can get your e-mails. They can get text messages. They can get all of these things. China knows exactly what they are doing. You want China to go make medicines in China, not America? You now wanted kids to go and get on this social media that's dangerous for all of us? You were in business with the Chinese that gave Hunter Biden $5 million. We can't trust you. We can't have TikTok.
RAMASWAMY: The Republican Party [needs to] reach the next generation of young Americans where they are. But kids under the age of 16 should not be using addictive social media. [And we should] get to declaring independence from China.
I'm the new guy here, and so I know I have to earn your trust. What do you see? You see a young man who's in a bit of a hurry, maybe a little ambitious, bit of a know-it-all, it seems, at times. I'm here to tell you: "No, I don't know it all. I will listen. I will have the best people, the best and brightest in this country, whatever age they are, advising me." Many of the people on this stage included; that's how I built my companies. I want to be challenged. I want people who disagree with me. That's what makes America great because we're not a perfect nation. We're founded on the pursuit of perfection.
BURGUM: First of all, [if Americans] have a level playing field, they can outcompete anyone in the world. But this is part of the larger issue, which is, we're in a cold war with China. The Biden administration won't admit that. But we're also in a economic war through what we're doing with agriculture and energy. And we're also in a war with them relative to cyber war. We get attacked every day in North Dakota--every state, every school district--all being attacked every day by either China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. And now we have got a Biden administration whose whole policy is appeasement, making the world less safe. And then they're also helping Iran get closer to nuclear weapon, then which pushes all of the Middle East closer to China and Russia.
KENNEDY: Nobody wanted an alternative to the U.S. dollar. This happened because of our weaponization of the U.S. dollar and unilateral weaponization of our control of the world currency. We were pounding people's personal assets if the government misbehaves and do it unilaterally. We need to deescalate our violence around the world which has driven the creation of BRICS. [China] wants to bury us but they want to do it on an economic playing field. And they need us. You know, they cannot survive without us.
KENNEDY: China does not want a war with the United States. We spent three times on our on our military what they do. We have 800 bases abroad; they have one and a half. Look, they want to compete with us. They want to bury us but they want to do it on an economic playing field. And they need us. You know, they cannot survive without us.
Q: We're their marketplace; we are the biggest buyer of Chinese goods by far.
KENNEDY: Right, so I'm not afraid of the US competing with China head to head and countries around the world. I think that's good for us. I think we win that competition. I'm not somebody who thinks that we should divide the world. I think the shared markets are ultimately good for the world because they decrease the chance of war. When you when you treat somebody as an adversary, they tend to become one. There are a group of people in the State Department who want constant pipeline of new wars to feed the military industrial complex
KENNEDY: Economic advice or patriotic advice?
Q: No, about doing business in China.
KENNEDY: I'm not somebody who thinks that we should divide the world. Government policy should be about fostering, developing, nurturing the middle class in this country. I don't think we should cut off trade with China. I think some of the things that are being done for example, the programs to bring semiconductor--
Q: The CHIPS Act.
KENNEDY: In the CHIPS Act, I don't like the fact that we're getting subsidies to the richest companies in the world. I'd like to see more trying to bring the industry to home. I don't think we should be rattling the sabers with China.
[Wikipedia: The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in 2022, provides roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States.]
We've got a plan right now, the $1.2 trillion Green New Deal spending buried in the Inflation Creation Act [the Inflation Reduction Act -- ed.] is something that is just subsidizing China.
If we're going to stop buying oil from the Middle East and start buying batteries from China, we're just trading OPEC for Sinopec. And then belatedly, the Biden administration put sanctions on Russian oil. Who's buying it? China.
So, if you buy a battery in this country, you buy a solar panel, it's being produced in a plant in China powered by coal where it's being powered by oil and gas at 20 percent off. And every farmer in this county like to buy diesel at 20 percent off, just like they're buying it in China.
Gov. Nikki HALEY: Is climate change real? Yes, it is. But if you want to really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions. That's where our problem is. And these green subsidies that Biden has put in, all he's done is help China because he doesn't understand all these electric vehicles that he's done, half of the batteries for electric vehicles are made in China. And so, that's not helping the environment. You're putting money in China's pocket. And Biden did that. We need to acknowledge the truth, which is these subsidies are not working. We also need to take on the international world and say, 'okay, India and China, you've got to stop polluting.' And that's when we'll start to deal with the planet.
Sen. Tim SCOTT: If we want the environment to be better, the best thing to do is to bring our jobs home from China. If we create 10 million new jobs in my Made in America Plan, we will have a better economy and a better environment. America has cut our carbon footprint in half in the last 25 years. The places where they are continuing to increase -- Africa, 950 million people; India, over a billion; China, over a billion. Why do we put ourselves at a disadvantage, devastating our own economy? Let's bring our jobs home.
FactCheck by U-S-History.com: China is the primary source of products going through the Colon Free Trade Zone and its increasing presence around the Canal has made the waterway a flashpoint for US-China competition. China's influence in Panama has only grown since 2017 when then-president Varela severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognized China.
[On the "sale" of the Canal to Panama]: In 1903, the U.S. offered to pay Colombia the sum of $10 million plus an annual payment of $250,000 for a perpetual lease. The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty, but Colombia Senate defeated it. President Teddy Roosevelt [then recognized a rebellion creating] independent Panama, and gave the new government the same deal. [Conclusion: The U.S. never "owned" the Panama Canal and Pres. Carter's Panama treaty acknowledged that].
TRUMP: Yeah, and it's far beyond Cuba. We built a thing called the Panama Canal. We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito, malaria. The Panama Canal was such an incredible engineering marvel. We sold it under Jimmy Carter. We sold it to Panama for $1. The following day they quadrupled the amount of money that ships had to pay to get across. It's one of the most profitable things. We gave it away for $1. China now controls it. They actually control the Panama Canal. They run it, they control it, and we shouldn't let that happen. We can't let China be in Cuba. They'll get out. If I'm president, they'll get out. Because I had a very good relationship with President Xi. He respected this country. He respected me and he'll get out. We can't let them run the Panama Canal. We built the Panama Canal. Should have never been given to Panama. We should have had it, but we gave it for $1. Think of it.
Ukraine is not a priority for the United States of America. And I do not want to get to the point where we're sending our military resources abroad when we could be better using them here at home to protect our own borders.
Vivek RAMASWAMY: False. You've been pushing this lie all week.
HALEY: But you want to go and defund Israel. You want to give Taiwan to China.
RAMASWAMY: So our relationship with Israel will be stronger by the end of my first term. But it's not a client relationship. It is a friendship. And you know what friends do? Friends help each other stand on their own two feet. So I will lead Abraham Accords 2.0. I will partner with Israel to make sure Iran never is nuclear-armed.
But you know what I love about Israel? And I have been there probably in the last 10 years more than most people on this stage. You know what I love about them? I love their border policies. I love their tough-on-crime policies. I love that they have a national identity and an Iron Dome to protect their homeland. And so, yes, I want to learn from the friends that we're supporting.
A: I would not support it. I think that this is disastrous, that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else's border, when we should use those same military resources to prevent across the invasion of our own southern border. We are driving Russia further into China's hands. The Russia-China alliance is the single greatest threat we face. And I find it offensive, that we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kyiv, to their Pope, Zelenskyy, without doing the same thing for people in Maui or Chicago. Ukraine is not a priority for the United States. And I think that the same people that took us into Iraq War--you not start another no-win war. And I do not want to get to the point where we're sending our military resources abroad when we could be better using them here at home.
Suarez said he'd move to label drug cartels as terrorist organizations and also added that he'd support sending troops to target cartels in Mexico, but that his administration would be collaborating with Mexico on that endeavor. "We're not going to invade Mexico," Suarez said. "I just don't see that as a realistic option."
"As the son of exiles from a communist country, I understand the threat of Communist China in a way that I think no other candidate does."
The Republican candidate noted that the U.S. has imposed taxes and tariffs on Chinese imports, attempted to ban the app TikTok, and disrupted tech supply chains. These measures, he believes, are provocative and unnecessary. He has urged for respect and restraint, suggesting that wars have often started with seemingly harmless nationalistic policies.
Suarez responded, "The what?"
"The Uyghurs," Hewitt said, prompting Suarez to ask, "What's a Uyghur?"
His second minute-long ad titled "Change" touts Burgum as a "new leader for a changing economy." It highlights his background growing up in rural North Dakota, using his inherited farmland to invest the seed capital for Great Plains Software. He sold the company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001, and became governor of his home state in 2016.
"As governor, we took North Dakota from billions in the hole to a surplus," Burgum said. "We balanced the budget every year and passed record tax cuts, again, working together. Think what we could do with America."
If I were President Zelenskyy, I'd want everything too. But there's going to come a point, if Ukraine is aggressive enough and we're giving them the arms and support that they need, that both Ukraine and Russia are going to understand that it's time to end the killing and there may have to be some kind of compromise. That's what we should be in the middle of trying to foster, once we get in a position where Ukraine can protect the land that's been taken by Russia in this latest incursion.
He would seek to form that alliance with South Korea, Japan, India, Australia and "much of Southeast Asia" to push back on Beijing. "I think there's a world in which Russia even plays a role with that," he said.
The idea of an "Asian NATO" has been around for years, though as of now there's no real movement to create one. The entrepreneur's ultimate vision is one of a "trilateral order" where the top three powers are the U.S., China and Russia. The key, he argues, is severing ties between Moscow and Beijing to eliminate that support for Xi's government.
And no other candidate in either party is talking about this. I think that's the top threat we face. And that's the focus of my foreign policy.
Newt GINGRICH: Here are facts. The widow of the Moscow mayor sent millions of dollars to Hunter Biden. He got money from Kazakhstan. He got money from Ukraine and served on a board about which he knew nothing. He got a lot of money from China. And it's a fact that $3 million that has been disclosed that went to the Biden family from a Chinese billionaire. Now, you can decide that none of this stuff matters. But the fact is, you have the Vice President taking his son on Air Force Two into China where his son was making business deals. And he's a sex addict, he's an alcoholic, he's a drug addict.
Q: Is nepotism a crime?
GINGRICH: If you listen to his description of Hunter, why would anyone invest in Hunter? They were investing in Joe.
The reality is, we need defense capabilities of the homeland, nuclear defense capabilities, cyber defense capabilities, super EMP, electromagnetic pulse capabilities, that could take out our electric grid. We are way behind. And so the hallmark of my foreign policy is going to be you don't mess with the homeland. Start with that first.
Some DC commentators have opined that Trump's nomination represented a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. But this analysis gets it exactly backward. Since Ronald Reagan [retired in] 1989, the GOP grass roots had been longing for someone who rejected the old-guard way of doing business and who could speak to their concerns and aspirations. Trump supported policies that appealed to the base in a way that GOP leaders in the DC swamp had been either incapable of doing or unwilling to do.
And it's time for us to stop being reactionary to China and start actually being aggressive and letting China know what we expect of them.
There are 7 countries with "high application" of capital punishment for drug offenses, according to hri.global. Do those 7 countries have the fewest drug problems? We'll compare deaths from drugs per million people, from WorldLifeExpectancy.com--there's no pattern:
UN experts have estimated that more than one million people, mainly Uighurs, have been imprisoned in recent years in a vast system of camps in Xinjiang. The US and many rights groups have called it "genocide".
The US cited the situation in Xinjiang in a decision earlier this month to launch a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. The Biden administration also imposed trade sanctions last week on several Chinese companies, accusing the government in Beijing of advancing high-tech surveillance on the Uighurs. [See H.R. 6256 for details of bill]
OTI transcript of Donald Trump's interview with Sean Hannity: "They [the Europeans] screw us on trade. They are in many ways worse than China, or as bad as China, on trade. How many Chevrolets are being sold in Berlin? Not too many. How many Chevrolets are being sold in Paris? Not too many. Maybe none. And yet, we sell their products -- their wines, and their cars, and their Mercedes, and their BMWs -- we sell it all over our country."
CNN Fact Check: Trump was criticizing the lack of reciprocity of certain countries in selling American goods here. But for the record, from what I could find, there were more than 200,000 Chevrolets registered in Germany in 2019. In the first half of the last decade, roughly 20,000 Chevrolets were being sold in France a year. Both of those numbers are larger than "none."
We must meet the new moment accelerating global challenges--from the pandemic to the climate crisis to nuclear proliferation--challenging the will only to be solved by nations working together and in common. We can't do it alone. We must start with diplomacy rooted in America's most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.
That's the grounding wire of our global power. That's our inexhaustible source of strength. That's America's abiding advantage.
We've elevated the status of cyber issues within our government, including appointing the first Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology. We're launching an urgent initiative to improve our capability, readiness, and resilience in cyberspace.
BIDEN: Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. I was able to get environmental organizations--as well as people worried about jobs--to support my climate plan. Because it will create millions of new good paying jobs, we're going to take 4 million buildings and 2 million homes and retrofit them so they don't leak as much energy, saving hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in the process and creating significant number of jobs.
TRUMP: First of all, China is paying. They're paying billions and billions of dollars. I just gave $28 billion to our farmers.
BIDEN: Taxpayer's money. Didn't come from China.
TRUMP: No, no. You know who the taxpayer is? It's called China. China pays $28 billion, and you know what they did to pay it, Joe? They devalued their currency and they also paid up, and you know got the money? Our farmers, our great farmers, because they were targeted. You never charged them anything. Also, I charged them 25% on dumped steel, because they were killing our steel industry. We were not going to have a steel industry. And now we have a steel industry.
BIDEN: There's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. He doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues. [Based on] the decisions you're making, middle-class families like I grew up in Scranton, they're in trouble.
TRUMP: First of all, China is paying. They're paying billions and billions of dollars. I just gave $28 billion to our farmers.
BIDEN: Taxpayer's money. Didn't come from China.
TRUMP: No, no. You know who the taxpayer is? It's called China. China pays $28 billion, and you know what they did to pay it, Joe? They devalued their currency and they also paid up, and you know got the money? Our farmers, our great farmers, because they were targeted. You never charged them anything. Also, I charged them 25% on dumped steel, because they were killing our steel industry. We were not going to have a steel industry. And now we have a steel industry.
BIDEN: There's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. He doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues. [Based on] the decisions you're making, middle-class families like I grew up in Scranton, they're in trouble.
BIDEN: I asked everyone to take the pledge: Any country, no matter who it is, that interferes in American elections will pay a price. They will pay a price. And it's been overwhelmingly clear this election--I won't even get into the last one--this election, that Russia has been involved, China's been involved to some degree, and now we learn that Iran is involved. They will pay a price if I'm elected. They're interfering with American sovereignty. That's what's going on right now. They're interfering with American sovereignty. I don't think the President has said anything to Putin about it. I don't know why he hasn't said a word to Putin about it. His buddy Rudy Giuliani--he's being used as a Russian pawn. He's being fed information that is Russian that is not true. And then what happens? Nothing happens.
TRUMP: 2.2 million people were expected to die. We closed up the greatest economy in the world in order to fight this horrible disease that came from China. The mortality rate is down 85%. There was a spike in Florida and it's now gone. There was a very big spike in Arizona. It's now gone. We have a vaccine that's coming. We have Operation Warp Speed, which is the military is going to distribute the vaccine. I had it and I got better.
BIDEN: He did virtually nothing. And then he gets out of the hospital and he talks about, "Oh, don't worry. It's all going to be over soon." Come on. There's not another serious scientist in the world who thinks it's going to be over soon.
TRUMP: I didn't say "over soon." I say we're learning to live with it. We have no choice. We can't lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does. As the president couldn't do that and go away for a year and a half until it disappears. I can't do that.
TRUMP: 99.9% of young people recover. We have to recover. We can't close up our nation. We have to open our schools and we can't close up our nation, or you're not going to have a nation.
BIDEN: He says that we're learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it. And you say, "I take no responsibility."
TRUMP: I take full responsibility. It's not my fault that it came here. It's China's fault. They kept it from going into the rest of China for the most part, but they didn't keep it from coming out to the world, including Europe and ourselves. But when I closed, he said, "This is a terrible thing, you're xenophobic." I think [Biden] called me racist even, because I was closing it to China. Now he says I should have closed it earlier.
Q: What do you say to Americans who are fearful that the cost of shutdowns?
BIDEN: What I would say is, I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country.
TRUMP: I was a businessman doing business. The bank account you're referring to, which is, everybody knows about it, it's listed, the bank account was in 2013. That's what it was. It was opened. It was closed in 2015. I was thinking about doing a deal in China, like millions of other people, I was thinking about it & I decided I'm not going to do it, didn't like it, I decided not to do it, had an account open & I closed it.
BIDEN: I'd make China play by the international rules, not like he has done. When I met with Xi and when I was still vice-president, he said we're setting up air identification zones in the South China Sea. You can't fly through them. I said we're going to fly through them. We just flew B-52, B-1 bombers through it. We're not going to pay attention. They have to play by the rules.
We find ourselves, in the Western Pacific, where we're isolated as well. You have Japan and South Korea at odds with one another. China is making moves. So I would say, we're find ourselves less secure than we've been. I do compliment the president on the deal with Israel recently. But if you take a look, we're not very well trusted around the world. When 17 major nations in the world were asked who they trust more, who's a better leader, and the president came in behind both, the international survey, both behind Putin, as well as Xi. And look what Putin is doing.
TRUMP: I did put it in very early. Joe Biden was two months behind me, and he called me xenophobic and racist, because I put it in. And it turned out that I was 100% right. I also put it on Europe, very early, because I saw there was a lot of infection in Europe. The news doesn't get out the right answer, because I put on a travel ban far earlier than Dr. Fauci thought it was necessary. I was actually the only one that wanted to put it on. I put it on at the end of January. When I put on the travel ban Joe Biden, and others, said, "This is ridiculous. You don't do that." Well, Dr. Fauci said, I saved thousands and thousands of lives.
BIDEN: All the way back in the beginning of February, I argued that we should be keeping people in China.In February, I did a piece for USA Today saying, "This is a serious problem." Trump denied it. He said it wasn't.
BIDEN: I suggested that we should be seeking access to the source of the problem. Trump never pushed that.
Q [to TRUMP]: Why did you only put in place a travel ban from China?
TRUMP: I put it in very early. Joe Biden was two months behind me, and he called me xenophobic and racist.
BIDEN: All the way back in the beginning of February, I argued that we should be keeping people in China. There were 44 people on the ground [in China]. All those 44 people came home [as US citizens despite the ban on non-citizens]. In addition to that, I pointed out that I thought in February, I did a piece for USA Today saying, "This is a serious problem." Trump denied it. He said it wasn't. He missed enormous opportunities and kept saying things that weren't true. "It's going to go away by Easter"; "When the summer comes, it's all going to go away like a miracle." He's still saying those things.
HARRIS: Joe Biden will not end fracking, he has been very clear about that.
PENCE: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would put us back in the Paris Climate Accord. They'd impose the Green New Deal, which would crush American energy and would crush American jobs. President Trump and I believe the progress we have made in a cleaner environment has been happening because we have a free market economy. What's remarkable is the United States has reduced CO2 more than the countries that are still in the Paris Climate Accord, but we've done it through innovation.
PENCE: China is to blame for the coronavirus. President Trump stood up to China that had been taking advantage of America for decades in the wake of Joe Biden's cheerleading for China. President Trump made that decision before the end of January to suspend all travel from China. The American people deserve to know Joe Biden opposed President Trump's decision to suspend all travel from China.
HARRIS: The Trump administration's approach to China has resulted in the loss of American lives, American jobs. There is a weird obsession that President Trump has with getting rid of whatever accomplishment was achieved by President Obama and Vice President Biden. They created the office responsible for monitoring pandemics. They got rid of it. There was a team of disease experts that President Obama and Vice President Biden dispatched to China to monitor what might happen. They pulled them out.
TRUMP: That's right. We had the best African American employment numbers in history by far, not even close. We had the best Hispanic American, the best Asian American, the best numbers in history. We had the greatest economy in the history of the world and we had to close it because of the China virus.
BIDEN: I believe Russia is an opponent.
Q: Do you view China as an opponent? The President says you've been too cozy with China, too accepting of them in the international community.
BIDEN: I'm not that guy. We now have a larger trade deficit than we've ever had with China. [Trump in a negative way] keeps going on about the World Trade Organization; they just ruled that his trade policy violated [WTO rules with its tariffs on China]. In our Administration, when the WTO [was dealing with China], we sued. We went to the World Trade Organization 16 times, 16 times.
Q: Do you view China as an opponent?
BIDEN: I view China as a competitor.
Q: Competitor?
BIDEN: A serious competitor. That's why, I think, we have to strengthen our relationships and our alliances in Asia. As you may recall, when I was in China, I said to Xi, "We're going to abide by international norms. That's what we're going to do and insist that they do."
BIDEN: I would make it clear, just as we did in our Administration, that when they use state-owned enterprises, which is what they're doing, state-owned enterprises, to undercut the price that they can charge, to be able to come and compete with American manufacturing, that they would be denied that opportunity. I would also make it clear that if any of that is being purchased by any government agency, that we will not purchase anything that is not made in America, including the downriver line of what has to be done, all the parts.
Q: What would you do differently from President Trump?
BIDEN: You can't do where he's given a tax break to companies that go overseas, and then import the product back into the United States, even though their headquarters is here, the chain goes overseas, and they bring it back in cheaper, than you being able to produce it. I'm going to make sure that it's made in America.
TRUMP: We have tremendous African American support. If you look at just prior to this horrible situation coming in from China, when the virus came in, that was the probably the highest point, home ownership for the black community, homeownership, lower crime, the best jobs they've ever had, highest income, the best employment numbers they've ever had. If you go back and you want to look over many years, go back six or seven months, that was the best single moment in the history of the African-American people in this country
Q: Your statement is though, make it great again. Are you aware of how tone deaf that comes off to the African American community? You have yet to acknowledge that there's been a race problem in America.
TRUMP: Well, I hope there's not a race problem. I can tell you, there's none with me, because I have great respect for all races, for everybody. This country is great because of it.
TRUMP: Without question, I would say, because things were going so well, the whole COVID, the China virus, as I call it, because it comes from China, I think it's a much more accurate term.
It's been very difficult; it's been so sad. We will get there, it's going to happen. But nobody's seen anything like probably since 1917.
Q: What did you learn from it?
TRUMP: I learned that life is very fragile, because [even with] strong people, all of a sudden they were dead. And it wasn't their fault. It was the fault of a country that could have stopped it. And I made a great deal with China. I feel so differently about that [China trade] deal. I don't view it the same way because of the horror of this disease, that could have been stopped at the border.
Q: Could you have done more to stop it?
TRUMP: I don't think so. I think what I did by closing up the country, I saved lives. I think we did a very good job.
Trump had no problem with China's concentration camps: Bolton describes several instances where Trump waffles on China-related issues after conversations with Xi, notably on the mass concentration camps Beijing was using to imprison and 're-educate' Uyghur Muslims. Bolton writes that according to the US interpreter in the room during a conversation between Xi and Trump at the G-20 meeting in June 2019, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was 'exactly the right thing to do.' Bolton adds that Trump didn't wan
'I hoped Trump would see these Hong Kong developments as giving him leverage over China. I should have known better,' Bolton continues. 'That same month, on the 30th anniversary of China's massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, Trump refused to issue a White House statement. 'That was 15 years ago,' he said, inaccurately. 'Who cares about it? I'm trying to make a deal. I don't want anything.' And that was that.'
Joe Biden issued a statement saying Trump 'sold out the American people to protect his political future' in his dealings with China that Bolton outlined. 'He was willing to trade away our most cherished democratic values for the empty promise of a flimsy trade deal that bailed him out of his disastrous tariff war that did so much damage to our farmers, manufacturers, and consumers,' Biden said.
The request was made during the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. In Bolton's book, the former adviser paints the president as someone consumed with winning a second term and willing to pressure, cajole and plead with foreign powers to aid his quest.
'Trump's conversations with Xi reflected not only the incoherence in his trade policy but also the confluence in Trump's mind of his own political interests and U.S. national interests,' Bolton writes according to an excerpt published in the Wall street Journal. 'Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security.'
Snopes 7/13/20: One of the conspiracy theories that have plagued attempts to keep people informed during the pandemic is the idea that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory. Scientists who have studied the virus agree that it evolved naturally and crossed into humans from an animal species, most likely a bat. How exactly do we know that this virus, SARS-CoV-2, has a zoonotic animal origin and not an artificial one? The answers lie in the genetic material and evolutionary history of the virus, and understanding the ecology of the bats in question.
Sanders: I don't think this is the time for recrimination, to be punishing people. Now is the time to be working with China. They are learning a lot about this crisis and we have got to work with them. We've got to work with the World Health Organization. We've got to work with countries around the world. If there was ever a moment when the entire world is in this together, got to support each other, this is that moment.
Q: So you'd work with authoritarian regimes, such as China and Cuba?
Sanders: I believe in democracy, not authoritarianism in Cuba or any place else. China is undoubtedly an authoritarian society. But would anybody deny that extreme poverty in China today is much less than what it was 40 or 50 years ago? That's a fact. So, I think we condemn authoritarianism--but to simply say that nothing ever done by any of those administrations had a positive impact on their people, would I think be incorrect.
Joe Biden: I insisted, the moment this broke out, that we should insist on having our experts in China, in China to see what was happening, and make it clear to China there'd be consequences if we did not have that access. We have to lead the world. We need someone who knows how to bring the world together and insist on fundamental change in the way in which we're approaching this.
TRUMP: I think people are viewing us as having done a very good job. Nobody is blaming us for the virus. People are now staying in the US, spending their money in the US, & I like that. You know, I've been after that for a long time. They've sort of been forced doing that. It's all going to work out. I just made a great China deal. China is paying us billions of dollars because of what I did to them with tariffs. I mean, to a point where my farmers are in love with me because I took some of that money and gave it to them.
Q: Do you care about the national debt?
TRUMP: I do. Very much. Now, the good thing about the debt is we're paying very little interest--almost nothing. In fact, I want to refinance the debt.
Q: So this would be a focus of a second term?
TRUMP: Oh, absolutely. Now, again, we were disturbed by what's going on with the virus, but that's going to be fine. But, you know, that was a disturbance.
TRUMP: As soon as I heard that China had a problem, I said, "What's going on with China? How many people are coming in?" Nobody but me asked that question. And you know that I closed the borders very early. We've been given A-pluses for that. You know, it saved a lot of lives.
And that's why we have only, right now, 11--it's a lot of people, but it's still 11 people--versus tremendous numbers of thousands of people that have died all over the world. We have 11. We have 149 cases, as of this moment. This morning, it was 129. So we were really given tremendous marks for having made the decision.
I don't blame anybody. I want to get everybody to understand: They made some decisions which were not good decisions. We inherited decisions that they made, and that's fine. We undid some of the regulations that were made that made it very difficult, but I'm not blaming anybody. We've done a great job.
BIDEN: I think it's important that we understand that you have to have a president in charge. What I would do were I president now, I would not be taking China's word for it. I would insist that China allow our scientists in to make a hard determination of how it started, where it's from, how far along it is. Because that is not happening now. And we should be allowed to do that and they should want us to do that, because we have genuine experts who know how to confront these things. But we need to invest [in science agencies] immediately. We should have done it from the beginning, the moment the virus appeared. But we're getting late, but we've got good scientists. And I just hope the president gets on the same page as the scientists.
BIDEN: You don't negotiate with a dictator, give him legitimacy without any notion whether he is going to do anything at all. You don't do that. Look what happened. [President Trump] gave this dictator--he's a thug--legitimacy. We've weakened the sanctions around the world.
Q: So what would you do?
BIDEN: I would be in Beijing, I would be speaking with Xi Jinping. I would be reassigning the relationship between the Japan and South Korea, and I would make it clear to China, we are going to continue to move closer to make sure that we can, in fact, prevent North Korea from launching missiles to take them down.
BIDEN: What we did with Ebola--I was part of making sure that pandemic did not get to the United States, saved millions of lives. And what we did, we set up, I helped set up that office on pandemic diseases. We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. And our president today--and he's wiped all that out. [With Ebola], we did it; we stopped it.
Q: So, more funding?
BIDEN: I would immediately restore the funding. [Trump] cut the funding for CDC. He tried to cut the funding for NIH. He cut the funding for the entire effort. And here's the deal. I would be on the phone with China and making it clear, we are going to need to be in your country; you have to be open; you have to be clear; we have to know what's going on; we have to be there with you, and insist on it and insist, insist, insist. I could get that done. No one up here has ever dealt internationally with any of these world leaders. I'm the only one that has.
As with most foreign leader meetings, Trump had been briefed but didn't seem to have retained the material and instead tried to wing it. Modi tried to focus on the threats India faced from Afghanistan, China, and Pakistan. His mention of Afghanistan led Trump off on a lengthy tangent about how stupid it had been for the US to have maintained its military presence in Afghanistan.
When Modi mentioned his concerns about China's aggressions in the region, Trump revealed a stunning ignorance about geography. "It's not like you've got China on your border", seeming to dismiss the threat to India.
Each time Modi tried to get Trump to engage on the substance of US-India relations, the American president veered off on another non sequitur trade deficiencies and endless war in Afghanistan.
Economists and experts told NBC News this is false. Consumers purchasing foreign goods are the ones who picked up the tab. J.P. Morgan estimated the cost of these tariffs on average U.S. families was more than $1,000.
Biden: It's on a collision course with China but not for war. What we have to make clear is that we in fact are not going to abide by what they've done. One million Uyghurs, Muslims, are in concentration camps. They're being abused. We should be moving 60% of our sea power to that area of the world, to let the Chinese understand that they're not going to go any further. Secondly, we should make sure that we began to rebuild our alliances. We in fact need to have allies who understand that we're going to stop the Chinese from their actions. We should be gone to the UN immediately and sought sanctions against them and the United Nations for what they did. We have to be firm. We don't have to go to war but we have to make it clear, "This is as far as you go, China." And in terms of their military buildup, it's real but it would take them about 17 years to build up to where we are.
Sanders: I voted against NAFTA, voted against PNC with China, agreements that cost four million decent-paying jobs. I don't agree this is going to be a great job creator. This is a modest improvement that would allow Mexican workers to negotiate decent contracts. But it is not going to stop outsourcing. It is not going to stop corporations from moving to Mexico. We need a trade policy that stands up for workers, stands up for farmers, and, by the way, the word "climate change" is not discussed, which is an outrage. I will not be voting for this agreement.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar: I am voting for it; I believe we have a change with this agreement. We've got better labor standards, better environmental standards, and a better deal when it comes to the pharmaceutical provision. While Senator Sanders is correct, there are some issues with it, is much better than the one originally proposed.
Trump signed the bills, which were approved by near unanimous consent in the House and Senate, even as he expressed some concerns about complicating the effort to work out a trade deal with China. "I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong," Trump said. "They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China & Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace & prosperity for all."
"We have to stand with Hong Kong," Trump said in an interview on "Fox & Friends." He continued: "But I'm also standing with President Xi. He's a friend of mine. He's an incredible guy.
The next day on CNN, Trump carried through on the threat. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her whatever. In my opinion, she was off base." Had Trump just accused Megyn of attacking him because she was menstruating? It sure sounded that way, but the nuances could be debated forever, and they were.
BIDEN: Yeah, well, look, we're either going to make policy or China's going to make the rules of the road. We make up 25 percent of the world economy. We need another 25 percent to join us. And I think-Senator Warren is correct: At the table has to be labor and at the table have to be environmentalists. The fact of the matter is, China--the problem isn't the trade deficit, the problem is they're stealing our intellectual property. The problem is they're violating the WTO. They're dumping steel and dumping agricultural products on us. In addition to that, we're in a position where, if we don't set the rules, we, in fact, are going to find ourselves with China setting the rules. And that's why you need to organize the world to take on China, to stop the corrupt practices that are underway.
BUTTIGIEG: Well, the president clearly has no strategy. You know, when I first got into this race, I remember President Trump scoffed and said he'd like to see me making a deal with Xi Jinping. I'd like to see HIM making a deal with Xi Jinping! Is it just me, or was that supposed to happen in, like, April? We saw it at the G7 [international policy meeting]. The leaders of some of the greatest powers and economies of the world sitting to talk about one of the greatest challenges in the world, climate change, and there was literally an empty chair where American leadership could have been.
HARRIS: My trade policy, under a Harris administration, is always going to be about saying, we need to export American products, not American jobs. And to do that, we have to have a meaningful trade policy. I am not a protectionist Democrat. Look, we need to sell our stuff. And that means we need to sell it to people overseas. That means we need trade policies that allow that to happen.
Q: What about China?
HARRIS: It's a complicated relationship. We have to hold China accountable. They steal our products, including our intellectual property. They dump substandard products into our economy. They need to be held accountable. We also need to partner with China on climate and the crisis that that presents. We need to partner with China on the issue of North Korea.
BIDEN: We have to bring around the rest of the world. When we did the Paris accord that they signed onto, it was agreed that we would constantly up the ante. China is exporting coal technology. They're making the environment much, much worse. There has to be a price that they pay if they do that. That's why I would talk about dealing with them in terms of tariffs. But you've got to get the rest of the world in on the deal to do i
BIDEN: I'd renegotiate. We make up 25% of the world's economy. Either China is going to write the rules of the road on trade or we are. We have to join with the 40% of the world we had with us, and this time make sure environmentalists and labor are there. I would not rejoin the TPP as it was initially put forward.
FIVE CANDIDATES HAVE SIMILAR VIEWS: Joseph Biden, Jr.; Steve Bullock; Peter Buttigieg; Kirsten Gillibrand; Beto O`Rourke.
The majority of Democrats have broadly slammed Trump's use of tariffs. Candidates such as Sens. Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand have criticized the president's move to impose tariffs on China and U.S. allies, arguing they hurt American consumers, workers and companies.
Pence: We will always follow the science on that in this administration. What we won't do -- and the Clean Power Plan was all about that -- was hamstring energy in this country, raising the cost of utility rates for working families across this country while other nations like China and India absolutely do nothing or make illusory promises decades down the road to deal with it.
Trump: I think maybe you do both. I think you might want to listen. There's nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, "We have information on your opponent." Oh, I think I'd want to hear it. It's not an interference. They have information. I think I'd take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI. The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen. They all do it; they always have.
TRUMP: I think maybe you do both. I think you might want to listen. There's nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, "We have information on your opponent." Oh, I think I'd want to hear it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You want that kind of interference in our elections?
TRUMP: It's not an interference. They have information. I think I'd take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI. If I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, that they come up with oppo research. "Oh, let's call the FBI." The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that's the way it is. It's called oppo research.
A: Part of the failure is that this president and administration have failed to understand that we are stronger when we work with our allies on every issue, China included.
Q: China is an ally?
A: No, meaning working with our allies to address China, in terms of the threat that it presents. This president has a preference for conducting policy by tweet. It is a display of a president who thinks that unilateral action is better than working with friends. It puts us in a weaker position.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow acknowledged that the Chinese do not directly pay tariffs on goods coming into the US, but instead American importers pay and oftentimes pass it on to US consumers, contradicting Pres. Trump's claims. Kudlow said that "both sides will suffer on this," but argued that China will suffer significant GDP losses as export markets are hit. The blow to US GDP won't be substantial since the economy is "in terrific shape," he said.
Last year, we lost 800--this for many years--almost $800 billion on trade. It's not sustainable. You can't do that. And now we're making great trade deals. I say, India is a very high-tariff nation. They charge us a lot. When we send a motorcycle to India, it's 100 percent tariff. They charge 100 percent. When India sends a motorcycle to us, we brilliantly charge them nothing. I want a reciprocal tax, or at least I want to charge a tax. It's called a mirror tax, but it's a reciprocal tax.
We are now making it clear to China that after years of targeting our industries, and stealing our intellectual property, the theft of American jobs and wealth has come to an end.
Therefore, we recently imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods--and now our Treasury is receiving billions of dollars a month from a country that never gave us a dime. But I don't blame China for taking advantage of us--I blame our leaders and representatives for allowing this travesty to happen. I have great respect for President Xi, and we are now working on a new trade deal with China. But it must include real, structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce our chronic trade deficit, and protect American jobs.
Jeff Johnson (R): No. Concerned about how Chinese tariffs will affect Minnesota farmers.
Tim Walz (D): No. Calls the tariffs "rash" & not in "the interests of America's farmers."
Ron DeSantis (R): Yes. Trump is a master negotiator trying to get concessions.
Andrew Gillum (D): No. "He's threatening Florida's workers, farmers, & companies."
"For months, we have urged China to change these unfair practices, and give fair and reciprocal treatment to American companies," Trump said in a statement. "We have been very clear about the type of changes that need to be made, and we have given China every opportunity to treat us more fairly. But, so far, China has been unwilling to change its practices."
TRUMP: Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn't think of the European Union, but they're a foe. Russia is a foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly. They're a foe. But that doesn't mean they're bad. It means that they're competitors. They want to do well, and we want to do well. And we're starting to do well.
Q: A lot of people might be surprised to hear you list the E.U. as a foe before China and Russia.
TRUMP: No, I look at them all. Look, E.U. is very difficult, I want to tell you. Don't forget, both of my parents were born in E.U. sectors, OK? I mean, my mother was Scotland. My father, Germany. And, you know, I love those countries. I respect the leaders of those countries. But, in a trade sense, they have really taken advantage of us, & many of those countries are in NATO. And they weren't paying their bills.
(VIDEO CLIP): TRUMP: When I was in China and other places, I said, "Mr. President, do you have a drug problem?" "No, no, no, we do not." I said, "huh, big country, 1.4 billion people, right? Not much a drug problem." I said, "What do you attribute that to?" "Well, the death penalty." So, honestly, I don't know that the United States, frankly, is ready for it. They should be ready for it.
(END VIDEO) Q: Now, the death penalty for drug dealers, is that something that you agree with? And should we be following China's lead when it comes to criminal justice?
Sen. Ron JOHNSON (R-WI): I would say we probably should not be following China's lead when it comes to criminal justice. I'm a supporter of the death penalty, but only where we absolutely are 100% certain that the person is 100% guilty. I'm not sure it would be applicable to drug offenses.
For this reason, I am asking the Congress to end the dangerous defense sequester and fully fund our great military.
As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.
Harvard University offered Tim an opportunity to gain a new perspective on global education by teaching in the People's Republic of China in 1989-90, where he joined of one of the first government-approved groups of American teachers to work in Chinese high schools.
Following his return to Nebraska in 1990, Tim developed a program of cooperation between American and Chinese students. He created a small business-- Educational Travel Adventures, Inc.--through which he led annual educational trips to China for American high school students. Tim's inspiring approach to teaching gained him recognition as the 2003 Minnesota Teacher of Excellence.
"When I enlisted in the National Guard at the age of 17, I never imagined that I would serve for 24 years. I knew that I was ready to accept the responsibility that comes with serving our country. Over the years, I discovered that I had the capacity to lead--a duty that I strive to fulfill each and every day. The honor of serving alongside my neighbors in southern Minnesota was a privilege."
The Russia reversal and the NATO turnabout were inherently linked, of course. As Russia appears more ominous, NATO seems more necessary. But the shift in attitude also offered one of the starkest examples yet of Trump's evolving views: "We must not be trapped by the tired thinking that so many have, but apply new solutions to face new circumstances throughout the world," Trump said at his news conference with the NATO secretary general.
Trump's campaign criticism of NATO stunned many at home and abroad, especially when he suggested conditioning America's commitment to defend its treaty allies on whether they had met their financial obligations.
A U.S. Treasury spokesman confirmed that the Treasury Department's semi-annual report on currency practices of major trading partners, due out later this week, will not name China a currency manipulator. "They're not currency manipulators," Trump said about China. The statement is an about-face from Trump's election campaign promises to slap that label on Beijing on the first day of his administration as part of his plan to reduce Chinese imports into the United States.
The Wall Street Journal paraphrased Trump as saying that the reason he changed his mind on the currency issue was because China has not been manipulating its yuan for months and because taking the step now could jeopardize his talks with Beijing on confronting the threat from North Korea.
We've lost more than 1/4 of our manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was approved, and we've lost 60,000 factories since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Our trade deficit in goods with the world last year was nearly $800 billion dollars.
To accomplish our goals at home and abroad, we must restart the engine of the American economy--making it easier for companies to do business in the United States, and much harder for companies to leave.
Right now, American companies are taxed at one of the highest rates anywhere in the world. My economic team is developing historic tax reform that will reduce the tax rate on our companies so they can compete and thrive anywhere and with anyone.
Yes, for as far back as we have records: in his 2015 book, in his 2011 book, and in his 2000 book. Some sample excerpts:
TRUMP: Energy is under siege by the Obama administration. The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, is killing these energy companies. And you take a look at what's happening to steel and the cost of steel and China dumping vast amounts of steel all over the United States, which essentially is killing our steelworkers and our steel companies. It's an absolute disgrace.
CLINTON: First of all, China is illegally dumping steel in the United States and Donald Trump is buying it to build his buildings, putting steelworkers and American steel plants out of business. That's something that I fought against as a senator and that I would have a trade prosecutor to make sure that we don't get taken advantage of by China on steel or anything else.
A: We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not. I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She's saying "Russia, Russia, Russia," but I don't. Maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK? We came up with the Internet, and Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they're beating us at our own game. So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is a huge problem. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better and certainly cyber is one of them.
A: I've built a great company. I've been all over the world. I've dealt with foreign countries. I've done tremendously well dealing with China and with many of the countries that are just ripping this country. I think the main thing is I have great judgment.
Q: What steps would you take to bring Putin back to negotiating table?
A: I would have a good relationship with Putin. Take a look at what happened with their fighter jets circling one of our aircraft in a very dangerous manner. Somebody said less than 10 feet away. This is hostility. Russia wants to defeat ISIS as badly as we do. If we had a relationship with Russia, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could knock the hell out of ISIS?
Q: Putin called you a brilliant leader.
A: When he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment. The fact is, look, it's not going to get him anywhere. I'm a negotiator. We're going to take back our country.
TRUMP: The 45% tariff is a threat. It's not a tax, it was a threat. It will be a tax if they don't behave. Take China as an example. I have many friends, great manufacturers, they want to go into China. They can't. China won't let them. We talk about free trade. It's not tree free trade; it's stupid trade. China dumps everything that they have over here. No tax, no anything. We can't get into China. The best manufacturers, when they get in, they have to pay a tremendous tax. The 45% is a threat that if they don't behave, we will tax you. It doesn't have to be 45, it could be less. But it has to be something because our country & our trade & our deals and most importantly our jobs are going to hell.??
Q: Will you promise that you will move your clothing collection to the US, the clothes that are made in China and Mexico?
TRUMP: I will do that. And by the way, I have been doing it more and more. But they devalue their currencies, in particular China. Mexico is doing a big number now, also. Japan is unbelievable what they're doing. They devalue their currencies, and they make it impossible for clothing-makers in this country to do clothing in this country. The Trans-Pacific Partnership--which Marco is in favor of---they don't take into concurrence the devaluation. They're devaluing their currency.
RUBIO: The answer is, he's not going to do it. And you know why? The reason why he makes it in China or Mexico is because he can make more money on it.
TRUMP: We have a trade deficit with Mexico of $58 billion a year. We're going to make them pay for that wall. The wall is $10 billion to $12 billion. I don't mind trade wars when we're losing $58 billion a year. Mexico is taking our businesses. They de-value their currencies to such an extent that our businesses cannot compete with them, our workers lose their jobs. You wouldn't know anything about it because you're a lousy businessman.
"I mean, this guy's a bad dude, and don't underestimate him," Trump said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "Any young guy who can take over from his father with all those generals and everybody else that probably want the position, this is not somebody to be underestimated."
Trump maintained that China has control over North Korea and the US has control over China--thus "China should do that," he said. "China has control--absolute control--over North Korea. They don't say it, but they do," Trump explained. "And they should make that problem disappear. China is sucking us dry. They're taking our money. They're taking our jobs. We have rebuilt China with what they've taken out."
SANDERS: No I don't. I worry about Putin and his military adventurism in the Crimea, but I worry more about an isolated country. Russia lives in the world. China lives in the world. North Korea is a strange country because it is so isolated, and I do feel that a nation with nuclear weapons, they have got to be dealt with.
SANDERS: Let me respond to what the secretary said. We have a criminal justice system which is broken. Who in America is satisfied that we have more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China? Disproportionately African American, and Latino. Who is satisfied that 51% of African American young people are either unemployed, or underemployed? Who is satisfied that millions of people have police records for possessing marijuana when the CEO's of Wall Street companies who destroyed our economy have no police records. We need to take a very hard look at our criminal justice system, investing in jobs and education, not in jails and incarceration.
SANDERS: First of all, we're going to have to lean on China. China is North Korea's closest ally. They're gonna have to push North Korea to start adhering to international agreements.
Q: How do we lean on China?
SANDERS: We have a relationship with China. China is equally concerned about what North Korea is doing. North Korea is a paranoid, isolated nation. When you have a hydrogen bomb, if that's true, you're a threat to China as well.
TRUMP: ISIS is recruiting through the Internet. ISIS is using the Internet better than we are using the Internet, and it was our idea. I want to get our brilliant people from Silicon Valley and other places and figure out a way that ISIS cannot do what they're doing. You talk freedom of speech. I don't want them using our Internet to take our young, impressionable youth. We should be using our most brilliant minds to figure a way that ISIS cannot use the Internet. And then we should be able to penetrate the Internet and find out exactly where ISIS is and everything about ISIS. And we can do that if we use our good people.
Q: So, are you open to closing parts of the Internet?
TRUMP: I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I don't want to let people that want to kill us \use our Internet.
And they're building those artificial islands in the South China Sea and the president, up until recently, wouldn't sail a ship within 12 miles or fly a plane over it. I'll tell you this, the first thing I'll do with the Chinese is I'll fly Air Force One over those islands. They'll know we mean business.
TRUMP: I'm going to be bringing back jobs from China, from Japan, from India, from Brazil. This is going on at a level that you have never seen before. We now have corporate inversions, where companies are moving out of the United States. And they will be moving out in big numbers if we don't do something quickly. And my plan stops all of that.
Q: So, you want to close the loopholes for tax havens?
TRUMP: And I want to bring back trillions of dollars that is stuck in other countries that we won't let back in because we don't have intelligent people running our country.
Q: What about other loopholes on the personal side? Mortgage interest stays in there? Charitable giving?
TRUMP: That's right. Mortgage interest deduction would stay, absolutely. Carried interest, though, would not stay. One of the ways that the hedge fund guys who make a lot of money pay very little tax, the carried interest deduction. I'm knocking that out.
I know from my own experience that this is a difficult problem. The Chinese are very savvy businesspeople, and they have great advantages over our manufacturers. I've had several Trump-brand products made there.
Remember: The Chinese need us as much as we need them. Maybe even more.
TRUMP: Right. We're going to build the wall; we're going to create a border. We're going to let people in, but they're going to come in legally. They are going to come in legally. And it's something that can be done. They built The Great Wall of China. That's 13,000 miles. Here, we actually need 1,000, because we have natural barriers. We can do a wall. We're going to have a big, fat beautiful door right in the middle of the wall. We are going to have people come in, but they are coming in legally. And Mexico is going to pay for the wall, because Mexico--I love the Mexican people, I respect the Mexican leaders, but the leaders are much sharper, smarter and more cunning than our leaders. And people say, "Oh, how are you going to get Mexico to pay?" A politician cannot get them to pay. I can.
TRUMP: I am all for free trade, but it's got to be fair. When Ford moves their massive plants to Mexico, we get nothing. I want them to stay in Michigan.
Q: But the American Enterprise Institute says, your Trump Collection clothing line, some of it is made in Mexico and China.
TRUMP: That's true. I want it to be made here.
Q: The point is you're doing just what Ford is--you're taking advantage of a global trading market.
TRUMP: I never dispute that. I just ordered 4,000 television sets from South Korea. I don't want to order them from South Korea. I don't think anybody makes television sets in the United States anymore. I talk about it all the time. We don't make anything anymore. Now you look at Boeing. Boeing's going over to China. They're going to build a massive plant because China's demanding it in order to order airplanes from Boeing.
SANDERS: I voted against NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China. I think they have been a disaster for the American worker. A lot of corporations that shut down here move abroad. Working people understand that after NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China we have lost millions of decent paying jobs. Since 2001, 60,000 factories in America have been shut down. We're in a race to the bottom, where our wages are going down. Is all of that attributable to trade? No. Is a lot of it? Yes. TPP was written by corporate America and the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street. That's what this trade agreement is about. I do not want American workers to competing against people in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour for a minimum wage.
Q: So basically, there's never been a single trade agreement this country's negotiated that you've been comfortable with?
SANDERS: That's correct.
Q: But we just had 4% the last quarter.
TRUMP: But if you look at the overall average, we're doing less than 2% for the year. If China can do 7% -
Q: Right, but an emerging economy is always going to do 6%, 7%. Our sweet spot is 3% to 5%.
TRUMP: Right. If we do 6% or 7% under my plan, everybody benefits in jobs.
Q: We've never had a year of 6% or 7%. How is that gonna look?
TRUMP: Well, number one, corporate inversion is a big deal. There are many companies right now that are talking about very seriously leaving this country. And you're talking about thousands of jobs.
Q: What you're saying is, you make it all up with growth.
TRUMP: Not all up with growth. We also start cutting.
A: I want to see the people in China live in a democratic society with a higher standard of living. I want to see that, but I don't think that has to take place at the expense of the American worker. I don't think decent-paying jobs in this country have got to be lost as companies shut down here and move to China. I want to see the Chinese people do well, but I do not want to see the collapse of the American middle class take place, and I will fight against that.
A: Time and time again, Bernie has voted against free trade deals with China. In 1999, Bernie voted in the House against granting China "Most Favored Nation" status. In 2000, Bernie voted against Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China which aimed to create jobs, but instead lead to the loss of more than 3 million jobs for Americans.
Q: Maybe these trade agreements aren't all great for Americans, but don't they provide millions of jobs for Chinese workers?
A: Bernie firmly rejects the idea that America's standard of living must drop in order to see a raise in the standard of living in China.
Q: So what does Bernie propose we do?
A: Instead of passing such trade deals again and again, Bernie argues we must "develop trade policies which demand that American corporations create jobs here, and not abroad."
TRUMP: Well, I think he's been a very poor president. We have $18 trillion right now in debt and going up rapidly. We don't have victories anymore. China is killing us on trade. Mexico's killing us at the border and also killing us on trade.
Q: I understand your critique, but why we won't see another black president for generations?
TRUMP: Because I think that he has set a very poor standard and it's a shame for the African American people. He really has done nothing for African Americans. You look at what's gone on with their income levels, and with their youth. They have problems now in terms of unemployment numbers. We have a black president who's done very poorly for the African Americans of this country.
We have to take back jobs from Japan, and Vietnam, and Mexico, and virtually everybody that's taking our jobs and ruining our manufacturing base. And we have to put people to work. Because the real unemployment number is probably 21%. People give up looking for jobs. And they no longer become a statistic. And it's very unfair. So we have to put our country back to work. We have to get great jobs for people and good paying jobs for people. And we're going to be just fine.
Stein: We should deal with China like a member of global community--stop isolating and intimidating China--that is not gonna work.
OnTheIssues: What about the latest standoff in the South China Sea?
Stein: It is wrongheaded for us to deal with territorial rights on the borders of China--what I mean by dealing with China as a member of global community is not to isolate them. On US debt, they finance all sorts of 3rd-world countries in a way that is far less heavy-handed than the US--we need to compete with China on that. We do need to stand up on human rights--but we need to do that inside the US or it does not pass the laugh test. Like in our jails and in our schools and in our courts and the way that we treat immigrants--we have created them and then we criminalize them. We need to get our own house in order first--stand up for human rights in China, yes, but also in Israel and Saudi Arabia too.
A: Well, there could be some manmade, too. I mean, I'm not saying there's zero, but not nearly to the extent [others say]. When Obama gets up and said it's the number one problem of our country--and, if it is, why is it that we have to clean up our factories now, and China doesn't have to do it for another 30 or 35 years in their wonderful agreement, you know, our wonderful negotiators?
When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over by the millions, and what do we do? When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn't exist, folks. They beat us all the time.
When do we beat Mexico at the border? They're laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they're killing us economically. The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems.
SANDERS: I have been hearing that argument for the last 25 years. I heard it about NAFTA. I heard it about CAFTA. I heard it about permanent normal trade relations with China. Here is the fact. Since 2001, we have lost almost 60,000 factories and millions of good-paying jobs. I'm not saying trade is the only reason, but it is a significant reason why Americans are working longer hours for low wages and why we are seeing our jobs go to China and other low-wage countries. And, finally, what you're seeing in Congress are Democrats and some Republicans beginning to stand up and say, maybe we should have a trade policy which represents the working families of this country, that rebuilds our manufacturing base, not than just representing the CEOs of large multinational corporations.
SANDERS: In the House and Senate, I voted against all of these terrible trade agreements, NAFTA, CAFTA, permanent normal trades relations with China. Republicans and Democrats, they say, "oh, we'll create all these jobs by having a trade agreement with China." Well, the answer is, they were wrong, wrong, wrong. Over the years, we have lost millions of decent paying jobs. These trade agreements have forced wages down in America so the average worker in America today is working longer hours for lower wages.
Q: So, is that a litmus test for you, to see whether or not Clinton is going to come out against the TPP?
SANDERS: I hope very much the secretary comes out against it. I think we do not need to send more jobs to low wage countries. I think corporate America has to start investing in this country and create decent paying jobs here.
[We should also] sign the petition to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership--another trade deal disaster.
A: The truth is, right now, no, because we know it will go nowhere. Look, one of the things we are doing, and the president is asking me to kind of get ahead of here, is that we have a real chance, both in this hemisphere and with China, to enter into joint ventures on renewable energy and on cleaner-burning natural gas. Let me give you an example: The Chinese are building something like one new coal-fired plant a week. The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can't breathe. So we have a great opportunity here to figure out how we can not only begin to wean ourselves off of carbon-based fuels but wean the world off of them too. It's just a gigantic opportunity, and it produces a boatload of jobs. There are going to be 600,000 new jobs out there in the gas industry over the next 10 to 12 years.
If we do our job correctly and we interface directly with the leadership, there will be intense competition, there will be occasional misunderstandings, but our children will not be looking at China as a sworn enemy. I do not believe that's in the cards. I believe there is healthy competition from a growing, emerging China, which I would argue is in the interest of all of us. One of the reasons China has been able to have this period of sustained growth and stability is because of a US presence in the Pacific, not in spite of.
A: I am confident that it's in the interests of China and the emerging Chinese leadership that it not result in conflict. The last thing that they need at this moment is to engage in anything remotely approaching military competition with the US. I do not believe that is their intention. It clearly is not our intention. The most important thing to assure that this not occur is to have a frank, straightforward, private dialogue with the emerging leadership in China, letting them know what our interests are, letting them know what we believe our role is, and let them make judgments about whether or not that in any way conflicts with their growth patterns or their ability to maintain their own national security interest.
And we all have a role to play in encouraging Beijing to define its interests more in terms of common global concerns than merely introspective concerns. The United States is a Pacific power. The bottom line is that the USA has an important and specific interest in an Asia-Pacific region that is peaceful and growing--as do our Russian friends and our Japanese friends. So we ought to intensify our cooperation in advance of those interests, moving forward together.
In December 2011, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found, in GPX v. United States, that U.S. law prohibits the Department of Commerce from applying CVDs to non-market economies, including China. This legislation overturns that decision.
Even as our nations cooperate, though, we will continue to compete. As Americans, we welcome this competition. It's part of our DNA. And it pushes our companies to develop better products and services and our government to craft better policies.
But competition can only be mutually beneficial if the rules of the game are understood, agreed upon and followed. I'm pleased that we have made progress in areas of concern. China's exchange rate is appreciating, though still substantially undervalued in our view. And China has responded to our concerns to strengthen enforcement of intellectual property rights as well.
A: It's barbaric. It's outlawed internationally in all but a few extremely repressive countries like Iran, China, and not many others. It's shameful that it continues to be performed. It's well established that mistakes are made--yet half of our states practice pre-meditated state-sponsored murder. It's also known that it's not effective. So why is it done? Revenge & retribution? That's not what our justice system is supposed to be about. It's not an effective deterrent.
For the past thirty years, China's economy has grown an average 9 to 10 percent each year. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, China's economy grew a robust 9.7 percent. America's first quarter growth rate? An embarrassing and humiliating 1.9 percent. It's a national disgrace.
Onshoring has huge potential. That's why Congress need to pass Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf's bill called the "Bring Jobs Back to America Act" (H.R.516) to help expand the onshoring movement and get American jobs back where they belong--here in America.
What China is doing on the cyber warfare front is equally alarming. Cyber spying can isolate network weaknesses and allow the Chinese to steal valuable intelligence.
China presents three big threats to the United States in its outrageous currency manipulation, its systematic attempt to destroy our manufacturing base, and its industrial espionage and cyber warfare against America. The Chinese have been running roughshod over us for years. Obama claims we can't do what's in our interests because it might spark a "trade war"--as if we're not in one now.
I asked the guy who was in charge of all the Walmarts in Asia--I asked him a simple question: Tell me, how many of these American company products are actually manufactured in the United States?
He was a little bit sheepish and a little bit hesitant and he said: Well, about 1 percent. Obviously, what everybody knew, it is a lot cheaper for the American companies to set up plants in China, hire Chinese workers at 50 cents an hour, 75 cents an hour, whatever it is, and have them build the product for the Chinese markets than it is to pay American workers $15 an hour, $20 an hour, provide health insurance, deal with the union, deal with the environment. That is not a great revelation. I think anybody could have figured that one out. But the big money interests around here pushed it and Congress and President Clinton, at that time, signed it and we were off and running.
Years ago, I was in Shanghai, China. There was a blur that went by the window. That blur was an experimental train they were working on--high-speed rail, which is now operational there, and other similar prototypes are being developed in China. Here we are, the United States of America, which for so many years led the world in so many ways, and now you are seeing a newly developing country such as China with high-speed rail all over their country, and in our cities, our subways are breaking down. Amtrak is going 50, 60 miles an hour, and the Chinese and Europeans have trains going hundreds of miles an hour.
BIDEN: Absolutely. Absolutely we do. We call for setting hard targets.
Q: On clean coal?
BIDEN: My record for 25 years has supported clean coal technology. A comment made in a rope line was taken out of context. I was talking about exporting that technology to China so when they burn their dirty coal, it won't be as dirty, it will be clean.
We would be negotiating from strength. We would win if we would just sit down and negotiate--but using our best people!
A: Well, no, it's not fair, but I don't think that's what's going to happen. There's three principles that have to play here for this to work, in my view.
Q: All investors suffer equally?
A: They should. We'll see what the plan is.
A: With the WTO guidelines, we could stop these [unsafe] products coming in now. This president doesn't act. We have much more leverage on China than they have on us. The idea that a country with 800 million people in poverty has greater leverage over us is preposterous. We've yielded to corporate America. We've yielded to this president's notion of what constitutes trade, and we've refused to enforce the laws that exist.
A: Clarity. Prevention, not preemption. An absolute repudiation of this president's doctrine, which has only three legs in the stool: 1) don't talk to anybody; 2) preemption; & 3) regime change. I would reject all three. We need a doctrine of prevention. The role of a great power is to prevent crises. And we don't have to imagine any of the crises. You have Pakistan, Russia, China, Darfur.
A: I'm not. No, I'm not willing to go there. You don't need to start a tariff war. All you have to do is enforce the law. Enforce the law.
A: I've been pushing, on the Foreign Relations Committee for the last seven years, that we hold China accountable at the United Nations. At the UN, we won't even designate China as a violator of human rights. Now, what's the deal there? We talk about competition in terms of trade. It's capitulation, not competition. Name me another country in the world that we would allow to conduct themselves the way China has, and not call them on the carpet at the UN
Q: So you would call them on th carpet?
A: Absolutely.
Q: You would appoint a UN ambassador who would press for this?
A: It's the one way to get China to reform. You can't close your eyes. You can't pretend. It is self-defeating. It's a Hobson's choice we're giving people here.
A: They're neither. The fact of the matter is, though, they hold the mortgage on our house. This administration, in order to fund a war that shouldn't be being fought and tax cuts that weren't needed for the wealthy--we're now in debt almost a trillion dollars to China. We better end that war, cut those taxes, reduce the deficit and make sure that they no longer own the mortgage on our home.
A: Change the fundamental way we educate our children. There's two things everyone knows: the smaller the class size, the better the outcome; and the better the teacher, the better the outcome. In those very nations named, a teacher makes as much as an engineer. If we want the best students in the world, we need the best teachers in the world.
We want to trade with China because of the size of its consumer market. But if the regime continues to repress individual freedoms, how many consumers will there really be? Isn’t it inconsistent to compromise our principles by negotiating trade with a country that may not want and cannot afford our goods?
We have to make it absolutely clear that we’re willing to trade with China, but not to trade away our principles, and that under no circumstances will we keep our markets open to countries that steal from us.
Despite the opportunity, I think we need to take a much harder look at China. There are major problems that too many at the highest reaches of business want to overlook, [primarily] the human-rights situation.
We need to address the issue of trade forthrightly and understand that our current trade policy is an unmitigated disaster. Our current record-breaking merchandise trade deficit of $112 billion is costing us over 2 million decent paying jobs. NAFTA, GATT, and Most Favored Nation status with China must be repealed, and a new trade policy developed.
Let's look at some of the components of a sensible trade policy. First, we must recognize that trade is not an end in itself. The function of American trade policy must be to improve the standard of living of the American people. America's trade policy must be radically changed, by committing ourselves to a "fair" rather than "free" trade policy.
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