http://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/08/27/experts-president-trump-hardball-china/
Foreign policy experts say that President Donald Trump is right to play hardball in the ongoing trade negotiations with China, despite critics' assertions that his actions are doing more harm than good. ...
However, several prominent foreign policy experts say Trump knows exactly what he is doing with China and that he is doing the right thing.
Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, former National Security Council senior director of strategic planning, said in an interview with Sirius XM's Breitbart News Daily that Trump is actually following the administration's National Security Strategy, which seeks to confront the economic and security challenge posed by China.
"It seems like it's an escalation in the trade war; it's actually a fulfillment of the National Security Strategy, which is essentially seeking to protect America from Chinese Communist Party predatory economics," said Spalding, who is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of the forthcoming book Stealth War: How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept.
He said more steps are in the works to confront Beijing, whose stated goal is to replace the U.S. as the world's leader by 2050:
And so, not just in trade, but you know, soon you'll begin to see and you've already started to see efforts in finance. You've already seen efforts in investment with [Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.] reform; [Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act]; areas in immigration where you're having much more scrutiny over applications for visas, particularly in areas of research, or science and technology.
In areas like the internet, ... securing America's internet and protecting their data; media, I think you need to see more scrutiny on that, and you're starting to see some with requiring Chinese media companies to register under [Foreign Agents Registration Act]; and also in politics ... you're starting to see much more diligence in registering as a foreign agent ...
The next effort is going to be in investing. And the president really fired the first shots when he said, "Hey I ordered companies to come back to the United States." So, infrastructure, industrial base, STEM education, research and development - all of this, by the way, is in the National Security Strategy - it should be no surprise.
And despite critics' claims that the U.S. is on the losing end of a trade war with China, Asia expert Gordon Chang said Chinese President Xi Jinping "is in a world of hurt."
"You have Hong Kong that is just unraveling. China's lost control. The Chinese economy right now is in much worse shape than it has been in a very, very long time," he said Monday on Fox Business Network. "There are signs of political discord ... but things are happening in Beijing that normally wouldn't happen in a period of stability."
"When you put all of that together, there's a sense, I think, that the Chinese really do believe they have got to calm the situation with the United States," he said.
Chang said China cannot just wait out Trump until 2020.
"I don't think they can wait it out to 2020, and the reason is they'd have a lot of businesses leaving. Because businesses, they can price in tariffs, but they can't price in uncertainty. And leaving it until the end of next year means that a lot of businesses, a lot of factories would be leaving. So I don't think that they can do that right now," he said.
"Right now, [Beijing is] facing challenges that it has not seen in three to four decades. So right now, I think that they are at risk and Xi Jinping understands that," he said.
Henry Olsen, Washington Post columnist and author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism, said he did not think negotiations with China were going well - but that that was a good thing.
"I think that the Chinese now are seeing that they can't simply fob the president off with some purchases of soybeans and a temporary reduction in the trade deficit, and so consequently, I don't think the trade negotiations are going well. I think that's a good thing because I think it's time for the American economy to disengage from China," he said in an interview with Sirius XM's Breitbart News Daily.
"We need to stop funding and building our geopolitical adversaries with our minds, money, and market, and so consequently, not having a quick deal and end to the trade negotiations is in the American interest, even if it's not in the interest of every American business," he added. ...
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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