During this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Night in America,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said Trump economic policies were part of an effort to compel Mainland China to play by the same rules as the rest of the world.
“Tariffs are dominating the conversation, but China doesn’t trade fairly, even without this current debate,” host Trey Gowdy said. “So what should our trade approach be with that country?”
“Well, good evening, Trey,” Cotton replied. Thanks for having me on. As it happens, I’ve just written a book about China, and in no small part, about the way they cheated American workers and businesses for decades. As I argue in “Seven Things You Can’t Say About China,” China has waged an economic world war, especially against the United States, going back several decades. They subsidize their own companies. They give them all kinds of concessions on taxes and land and regulation.”
“Oftentimes, they own these companies, something no American company can compete with fairly at the same time, they attack our companies,” he continued. “They hack into their systems, and steal their intellectual property, they exclude them from the Chinese market. They have forced technology transfers if they admit them to the Chinese market. So what President Trump has long tried to do is level the playing field with Communist China. And it’s not just the tariffs, as you say, they also taking important policy steps like closing the so-called de minimis loophole, which allows hundreds of dollars of goods and individual orders to come to United States from China, undermining American businesses, evading American tax and tariff laws, he closed that as well. So that’s just a small first step to making Communist China play by the same rules that the rest of the civilized world does.”
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