President Donald Trump said if his Democratic opponent Joe Biden wins the November 3 presidential election, “China will own the United States.”
“If Biden wins, China will own the United States,” Trump said in a Thursday interview with Fox Business’ Stuart Varney, before pointing to his own record on China. “I turned it all around,” he added.
Trump said, looking back 10 years, “Everybody projected 2019 the economy of China was going to be bigger than the U.S., except it didn’t happen because I got elected and I turned it the opposite way.”
Trump noted he imposed tariffs and other policies to stop China from “dumping” cheap imported steel in the U.S.
Dumping, as a term in international trade, occurs when a manufacturer sells a product to another country at an unusually low price. Fox Business reported in 2018, Trump enacted 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent tariffs on imported aluminum, as well as “anti-dumping” duties, aimed at stopping the steel dumping.
“No no, they want ‘Sleepy Joe’ to win,” Trump reiterated. “And if he does, if ‘Sleepy Joe’ wins, China will own the United States.”
In a later segment, Varney raised questions about reporting on Thursday, published by the New York Post, about Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China. Varney said, “The latest revelations that are out today suggest China provided a great deal of money to the Biden family, I believe it was $3 million, I think that’s the number. Does that revelation, that charge, does that change our relationship with China and does that change China, if Joe Biden wins, do they have something on Joe Biden that they can exploit?”
Trump responded, “Number one, yes, but more importantly, if China wins, because when he wins, China wins, so if China wins I’ll tell you what, they will own this country. You let Biden win, cause that’s a big win for China, that’s all they want is for Biden to win.”
During his interview, Trump also said his administration would seek ways to make China fund a U.S. stimulus bill.
“We’re going to take it from China, I’ll tell you right now it’s coming out of China,” Trump said. “They’re the ones that caused this problem.”
Asked how China would be made to pay for an economic stimulus for the U.S., Trump said, “There’s a lot of ways okay, there’s a lot of ways and I’ll figure every one of them out. “I already have them figured out. You know we’ve taken billions and billions of dollars for China over the last couple years.”
Trump went on to address ongoing negotiations over a stimulus deal for coronavirus relief. Trump said he would go “higher” in negotiations for a stimulus than the $1.8 trillion proposal already laid out by the White House, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has rejected.
Varney asked why Trump hadn’t agreed to a $2.2 trillion stimulus proposal raised by Pelosi. Trump responded, “Because she wants all sorts of goodies, she wants to bail out badly run Democrat states and cities.” Trump said the stimulus spending should be “COVID related.”
