“Trump is also not a China hawk. In his first term, he had a lot of China hawks around, Pompeo and Pence and these kinds of guys. Not not so much anymore. And what Trump believes is that the U.S. and China should have sort of an agreement to sort of divvy up the world – spheres of influence – and then just sort of get along as much as possible. That’s also what XI jinping believes.”
“Now, the problem, of course, is that the on the Chinese side, they’re doing a lot of things that threaten our national security, our public health, our prosperity. Then why the praise? Well, because Trump is not a China hawk. He doesn’t really care about that kind of stuff. He thinks it’s about business. It’s about investment. It’s about keeping the relationship in check so that he can pursue his other adventures, like in Iran, et cetera.”
“And you could say that plays into XI Jinping’s hands. Because if you think about the things that are really threatening us. China’s expanding militarily. They’re interfering in democracies. They’re stealing our intellectual property. They’re providing intelligence to the Iranians to kill Americans in the Middle East. It’s really hard to address those things when the main goal of your policy is just to keep everything copacetic.”
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