Donald Trump Launches Scathing Attack Against China Over Trade Deficit
In his latest bid to cement exactly where he stands on foreign policy, Donald Trump has launched a scathing attack against China over the United States’ trade deficit with the country.
Trump has long been a critic of China’s hold over the country, regularly promising to tackle the issue as president. Donald Trump has now gone one step further in those claims, telling supporters “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they’re doing.”
According to CNN, Donald Trump made the remarks over China at a campaign rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Trump’s comments were, of course, in reference to the high number of exports that China makes to the United States. Trump has been a sworn critic of trade deals between the United States and China, regularly claiming that China manipulates its currency to make its products more attractive around the world, and that’s killing the United States’ trade prospects. That being said, according to the Daily Mail, this isn’t the first time Trump has used the word “rape” to describe trade deals between the United States and China, having already heavily criticized the deficit once before when he toured a defense manufacturer in New Hampshire in 2011.
Donald Trump: "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country" https://t.co/kakTfGLQda pic.twitter.com/DAxAAg0kUm
— CNN (@CNN) May 2, 2016
Having lambasted China over its trade deals with the country, Trump went on to promise supporters that he’d turn it all around. Trump told supporters that at the moment, the United States is like a piggy bank to China, but he was quick to assure that it doesn’t have to be that way. Addressing the crowd in Indiana, Trump said, “We have the cards. We have a lot of power with China.”
#DonaldTrump: "We have the leverage, we have the power over China, economic power, & people don't understand it." pic.twitter.com/5ppECfMNPf
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) April 27, 2016
The speech was a testament to what we’ve come to expect fro the Republican front runner, Donald Trump when it comes to foreign policy. Whilst Trump has been criticized in the past for not having strong plans when it comes to foreign policy, that’s something the candidate has worked to fix drastically over recent weeks. That being said, his foreign policy efforts still appear to be largely targeted at clawing back the United States’ influence in the world. Whilst many don’t believe that Trump has sound solutions in mind when it comes to international relations, his offensive stance on issues like trade with China plays well with his core supporters and the grassroots of the Republican party, which goes some way to suggest his current lead over Ted Cruz in Indiana.
Donald Trump has made the trade deficit with China a big issue in the race for the Republican nomination. The trade deficit is essentially a measure of what goods the United States exports to China in comparison to goods coming the other way. Each month during 2015, the United States shipped around $9 million worth of goods to China, whilst approximately $40 million worth of goods came back from the country. It’s a deficit that many within the grassroots of the Republican party feel strongly about, which is why Donald Trump’s claims that he’ll claw back the trade deficit between the two countries are playing so well for him in the polls.
Ahead of the Indiana primary, Donald Trump is polling 15 points ahead of his closest rival, Ted Cruz. Cruz was once popular in the state of Indiana, but Trump has been hitting Indiana hard in the past few weeks, placing himself firmly at 49 percent in the polls, whilst Cruz sits at 34 percent and John Kasich on 13 percent.
It’s hard to deny that Donald Trump has the support he needs to pick up Indiana. However, that doesn’t mean Ted Cruz is giving up on the state just yet. The senator is continuing to hit the state hard himself in the hope that he can claw back those 15 points, which he so desperately needs.
[Photo by Ramin Talaie/Getty Images]
