Trump, who has long touted his friendly ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping, has now made a tough stance on China a key element of his campaign.
The idea of decoupling the US economy from the Chinese economy has been reiterated by US President Donald Trump as the November presidential election approaches, arguing that the US would not lose money if the world’s two largest economies no longer work together.
“So when you mention the word decouple, it’s an interesting word,” Trump told at a White House news conference, pledging to bring back jobs from China.
“We lose billions of dollars and if we didn’t do business with them we wouldn’t lose billions of dollars. It’s called decoupling, so you’ll start thinking about it,” he added.
Trump, who has long touted his friendly ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping, has now made a tough stance on China a key element of his campaign. At the same time, he accuses his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, of being too “soft” on Beijing.
“If Biden wins, China wins, because China will own this country,” he said.
The US president also pledged that in the future his government will ban federal contracts with companies that outsource work to subcontractors in China. Beijing will also be held accountable for letting the new coronavirus spread around the world.
“We will make America into the manufacturing superpower of the world and will end our reliance on China once and for all. Whether it’s decoupling, or putting in massive tariffs like I’ve been doing already, we will end our reliance in China, because we can’t rely on China. We will bring jobs back from China to the United States and we will impose tariffs on companies that desert America to create jobs in China and other countries,” he added.
In June, Finance Minister Steven Mnuchin said the decoupling of the two economies would happen if US companies were not allowed to compete on a fair and equal footing in the Chinese economy. Other officials and analysts, however, say the two countries’ economies are so intertwined that this is impossible.