Heritage Foundation’s Pillsbury: I’d Rather Trump Escalate the Tariff War with China than Do Some Agreement They Won’t Honor

EXCERPT:

PILLSBURY: “What Xi Jinping has been up to over the last two or three years is saying, ‘We have to turn inward and have our own people, our own rising middle class buy our products and, to some degree, rely much less on the Americans and the European Union.’ That’s the thrust of what Xi Jinping is doing and I think you know why. He has been anticipating this kind of tariff attack from Mr. Trump. When I was last in China about a year ago, I got an earful of how they’re getting ready for Trump, they are not afraid of him, they could outlast him for two or three years and ‘Don’t believe anything negative about our Chinese economy.’ That is the official Chinese propaganda line: ‘Our economy is doing fine, we’ll have a 5% growth next year. You Americans will be lucky to get 1.5 or 2%, so we are going to be double or triple your American growth rate.’ This is what’s been coming out of China. Now, is that a lie? Is that bluster? Do they just not know? This is what we will have to find out and I’m afraid it’s going to be the hard way. Just like in President Trump’s first term, he is going to have to get the talks going and get documents down in writing that say we will do this, we will not do that. The final agreement last time time, the January 2020 agreement, Mark, that was 90 pages long, with annexes and definitions of things. So, I hate to see that happen again. I’d much rather see President Trump escalate and really have a superpower showdown between China and ourselves so we do not get stalled for two or three more years and then have an agreement that’s not honored.”