Photo: AFP/Brendan Smialowski
Eurasia
18/07/2024 23:22
He suggested that Taiwan has a stranglehold on the computer chip industry over the U.S. and because of that, it has the means to pay. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy,” Trump said.
"Taiwan doesn’t give us anything. Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China. A slight advantage, and China’s a massive piece of land, they could just bombard it. They don’t even need to—I mean, they can literally just send shells. Now they don’t want to do that because they don’t want to lose all those chip plants. You know, all those plants and they don’t want to do that. But I will tell you, that’s the apple of President Xi’s eye, he was a very good friend of mine until Covid that I really, you know, I was, I didn’t feel the same way," the Republican presidential candidate told Bloomberg Businessweek.
According to Nikkei Asia, "the America First economic policies will inevitably impact China. The stated goals include protecting American workers, farmers and industries from unfair foreign competition; rebalancing trade; securing strategic independence from China; and revitalizing manufacturing." The news agency discussed how Trump's running mate J.D. Vance sees China and Asia.
"On the few occasions that Vance has spoken on foreign policy, the first-term senator has said that because of the 'stupidity' of Washington leaders over the past generation, China has become an industrial superpower. 'If we're going to lose a war, it will be because we have allowed our primary rival to become arguably our most powerful industrial competitor,' Vance said in a speech at the Quincy Institute in May. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance said the U.S. has to 'focus more on East Asia. That is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years,' and urged Europe to 'wake up' and handle its own security," Nikkei Asia wrote.
"Vance stuck to a hard line on China in his first speech since being selected earlier in the week. 'Together we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens,' Vance said on the third night of the Republican National Convention. He also called for more factories in the U.S. and restrictions on foreign workers, but did not name specific actions," CNBC reported.
However, in a viral video of a speech last year, Vance said that while American foreign policy is full of moralising and lecturing other countries, China's focuses on building bridges and roads, and feeding poor people.