.@POTUS on China: “We have a tremendous intellectual property theft going on, which likewise is hundreds of billions of dollars and that’s on a yearly basis.” pic.twitter.com/gFYJXuNnt6
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) March 22, 2018
As anticipated, President Trump announced a fresh crop of anti-China trade tariffs on Thursday, which is his latest step in possibly spawning a trade war (which Trump recently said would be “good” and “easy to win”) after steel and aluminum tariffs imposed earlier this month. This only adds to the Trump administration’s position against China as a major cyber and economic threat, which officials have floated as a reason to nationalize the 5G network, although there hasn’t been a formal followup on such a drastic step yet.
For now, the U.S. will target China over intellectual property theft as well as steel and aluminum. Trump’s announcement of tariffs on about $50 billion in Chinese imports included the following rhetoric:
“We have a tremendous intellectual property theft situation going on, which likewise is hundreds of billions of dollars, and that’s on a yearly basis … It [China] is the largest deficit of any country in the history of our world … This has been long in the making. We’ve lost, over a fairly short period of time, 60,000 factories in our country, six million jobs at least. Gone.”
The move is already causing ripples in the U.S. stock market (by 700 points so far). Those may, of course, adjust themselves as the market tends to do, but there’s a legitimate fear that moving against China in such an aggressive manner won’t make the U.S. richer, as Trump insists, but could destabilize the global economy. If that happens, the recent physical scuffle between John Kelly, a Secret Service agent, and Chinese security will look like flag (nuclear) football.
You can watch Trump’s full announcement of the tariffs below.
(Via Fox Business, CNN, SFGate.com & WH.gov)