President Donald Trump told a cheering Montoursville, Pennsylvania crowd on Monday that China would prefer Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to win in 2020, so they “can continue to make $500 billion a year and more, ripping off the United States.”
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After relating Biden’s claim that “foreign leaders had called him up and begged” him to run for president, Trump explained his belief as to why.
Foreign countries liked it much better. That is what they want. They want Joe Biden so that China can continue to make $500 billion a year and more, ripping off the United States. They like it. You look at what these countries have made. We lost on just trade $800 billion on average for many years. $800 billion! Not million! $800 million’s a lot, $800 billion is not even conceivable.
After criticizing the Obama administration for their trade policies, Trump told the crowd that his administration was “straightening it out.” (RELATED: Chinese Manufacturing Sinks To 3-Year Low As Trump Tariffs Take Hold)
“Foreign countries liked it much better when they could push us around, rip us off and make us pay for the privilege of handing over our jobs and handing over our wealth,” Trump told the crowd. “Eight long years ago, if you remember I said it’s really bad. We are never going back. The previous administration what they did to our country, they should be ashamed of themselves. Sleepy Joe said he that is running to, quote, ‘save the world.’ Well he is going to save every country but ours. And remember he said a week ago, ‘China is not a competitor.’ China is not a competitor? What they have done to us is indescribable economically. We have rebuilt China. They’ve done a great job, and I don’t blame China. I don’t blame them. We allowed it to happen. Our leaders allowed it to happen. Well, it’s not happening anymore.”
The cost of doing business with China in the past is well documented, from subsidizing their own industries to spying to intellectual property theft.
“China has been heavily subsidizing their own industries to bankrupt American competition, while also taxing America’s exports so that our companies can’t compete in China,” economics professor Erwin Antoni wrote in a Daily Caller op-ed. “On top of that, they steal intellectual property (IP) to avoid paying the research costs we’ve invested in. They also use non-tariff barriers (NTBs) like quotas and regulations to limit sales of our products. ‘Free’ trade with China has been a snare and a delusion, and Trump knows it.”
In truth, intellectual property theft cost the U.S. “between $225 billion and $600 billion annually,” according to a United States Trade Representative investigation, and Kevin Patrick Mallory became the most recent of several former intelligence officials to be punished for spying on behalf of China, a nation which does not hesitate to kill U.S. assets when discovered.