[CTC] Actually, Trump Loves Chinese Goods — So Long as they Make Him Richer

[Manuel Perez Rocha]

https://fpif.org/actually-trump-loves-chinese-goods-so-long-as-they-make-him-richer/
Actually, Trump Loves Chinese Goods — So Long as they Make Him Richer

Trump rallied to save a major Chinese firm right in the middle of a trade
war of his own making. Why?

By Peter Certo <https://fpif.org/authors/peter-certo/>, May 30, 2018.

[image: Print Friendly, PDF & Email]Print
<https://fpif.org/actually-trump-loves-chinese-goods-so-long-as-they-make-him-richer/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5-31-18#>
[image: donald-trump-china-manufacturing-industry-trade-war]

Shutterstock

*This article was jointly produced by Foreign Policy In Focus
<http://fpif.org/> and In These Times <http://inthesetimes.com/>**.*

Donald Trump built no small part of his political brand railing against
Chinese industry—so much so that *The Huffington Post *once published a
supercut <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs> of the president
sneering the word “China” dozens and dozens of times, for three full
minutes.

While Trump’s highly charged language about China “raping our country”
showcased the president’s usual xenophobia, the part about lost jobs spoke
to real economic pain that other politicians appeared to ignore. The
message played well in parts of the country—like my home state of Ohio, and
much of the Midwest besides—that suffered grievously as prosperous
industries pulled up their stakes and moved factories to other countries,
China chief among them.

Despite wild policy fluctuations on other fronts, Trump has been
uncharacteristically consistent on this point. For the last few months he’s
been stoking a possible trade conflict with China, threatening tariffs on
up to $150 billion worth
<https://www.vox.com/world/2018/5/14/17352088/trump-zte-china-trade-war> of
Chinese goods and drawing Chinese threats to penalize U.S. industries in
turn (cannily, often from the very regions
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/04/04/chinas-retaliatory-tariffs-will-hit-trump-country-hard/>
that
supported Trump in the 2016 election).

The president even that tweeted he was looking forward to a trade war.
(They’re “easy to win
<https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/02/trump-trade-wars-are-good-and-easy-to-win.html>,”
he said.) But within a few weeks, he seemed to roll over, suspending most
of those tariffs while trade talks were underway. “We’re putting the trade
war on hold,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told *Fox News*.

Trump initially claimed that he’d gotten the Chinese to decrease their
trade surplus by up to “$200 billion”—a claim the Chinese government flatly
denied. By all appearances, Beijing simply made vague, unenforceable
assurances
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/20/china-is-winning-trumps-trade-war/?utm_term=.5d12e5397117>
to
purchase consumer goods they were probably going to buy anyway.

For this, China didn’t just get a reprieve on tariffs. It won a reprieve
for a major Chinese corporation accused of running seriously afoul of U.S.
sanctions.

If Trump wanted a boogeyman for his broadsides against Chinese industry, it
would’ve been harder to come up with a better one than the Chinese phone
maker ZTE. It’s China’s second-largest telecommunications firm
<https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/05/15/611218144/as-u-s-china-trade-talks-begin-ztes-future-is-in-the-spotlight>,
a third of which
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-china-zte_us_5af9f701e4b0200bcab7fa66?utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=politics_fb&utm_medium=facebook&section=politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013>
is
reportedly owned by state entities.

But ZTE is no ordinary competitor for American firms. It’s also been
officially sanctioned by the U.S. government for selling goods with
American-made parts to Iran and North Korea, and then lying about its
efforts to address Washington’s complaints. Not only that, but some experts
have worried that the company could be using its phones as surveillance
devices. The U.S. military has even banned the sale of ZTE phones
<https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pentagon-says-stores-on-military-bases-cannot-sell-huawei-zte-phones-2018-05-02>
on
military bases.

Those sanctions may have been draconian, and perhaps the military’s
concerns were paranoid. But the cut-and-dry nature of the violations gave
the administration a chance to exercise the sort of corporate oversight it
often professes but seldom practices. This spring, Trump’s own Commerce
Department announced a seven-year ban on U.S. companies selling ZTE
component parts, like the microchips it desperately needs. The move was
expected to put the giant out of business.

But then, in a move that *The Washington Post *reports
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trumps-zte-tweet-sows-confusion-before-trade-talks-with-china/2018/05/14/d2cd049c-57b4-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html?utm_term=.264def1d834e>
went
completely outside the usual White House policy channels, Trump made a
stunning reversal: He was ordering Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to ease
the sanctions. And more astonishingly, Trump tweeted that he wanted ZTE “to
get back into business, fast”—because there were “too many jobs in China
lost.”

In addition to being a policy 180, this was extremely off-brand. The
president boastfully tweeting about saving jobs in China was, arguably, far
more bizarre than his typical *Fox and Friends *liveblogs
<https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/05/trump-media-feedback-loop-216248>,
or even dada-esque masterpieces like “covfefe
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/us/politics/covfefe-trump-twitter.html>.”
(Remember that?) And right in the middle of a possible trade war of his own
making, too.

The question, naturally, is why?

Mainstream media outlets dutifully offered seemingly plausible
explanations. *The Washington Post *reported
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trumps-zte-tweet-sows-confusion-before-trade-talks-with-china/2018/05/14/d2cd049c-57b4-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html?utm_term=.264def1d834e>
that
“In exchange for easing restrictions on ZTE, U.S. officials are pressing
China to relax tariffs on agricultural products and allow a U.S. technology
company, Qualcomm, to acquire NXP Semiconductors.” So perhaps it was a
simple concession in hopes of getting a better deal?

*NPR*, meanwhile, quoted an expert who suggested that banning U.S.
microchip exports to ZTE would only encourage China to develop its own
advanced technology, which worried some national security folks. Zhejiang
University’s Douglas Fuller explained
<https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/05/15/611218144/as-u-s-china-trade-talks-begin-ztes-future-is-in-the-spotlight>
that
the ban was “antagonizing China to double down on more techno-nationalist
import substitution policies,” which (I guess) sounds like a problem.

Others speculated that it was an attempt to get Chinese help with the
upcoming North Korea summit, which Trump subsequently made a big show of
canceling.

Perhaps all of these accounts were too generous. In fact, there might be a
far simpler explanation for the reversal, one much more on-brand with Trump
practices to date: plain old self-dealing.

Just 72 hours prior to Trump’s reversal on ZTE, *The Huffington Post *
reports
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-china-zte_us_5af9f701e4b0200bcab7fa66?utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=politics_fb&utm_medium=facebook&section=politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013>,
the Chinese government—which, recall, also owns entities controlling at
least a third of ZTE—made a $500 million loan to some Trump-branded
properties in Indonesia. And Chinese banks promised another $500 million to
the same. The Trump Organization has acknowledged the deal but refused to
comment, while a White House spokesman asked about the deal said simply
<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/15/17355202/trump-zte-indonesia-lido-city>,
“I’ll have to refer you to the Trump Organization.”

It also probably didn’t hurt that during the very same week, China
approved seven
new trademarks
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/business/ivanka-trump-china-trademarks.html>
for
Ivanka Trump, Trump’s daughter and White House advisor.

Viewed in this light, Trump’s ZTE deal feels like far less of a reversal.
It’s perfectly consistent
<https://www.vox.com/2016/12/9/13799904/trump-corruption-conflict-of-interest>
for
a president who’s praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines —
whose drug war has killed over 20,000
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/senator-rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-killed-20000-180221134139202.html>
people,
yet whose capital also hosts an upcoming Trump Tower
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-trump-tower-manila-shows-why-trump-can-never-truly-separate-himself-from-his-brand/2017/06/12/28701dfe-3a46-11e7-a59b-26e0451a96fd_story.html?utm_term=.dbad257523a7>
(the
developer, in turn, is Duterte’s special envoy
<https://www.vox.com/2016/12/9/13799904/trump-corruption-conflict-of-interest>
to
Trump). Or for a president with extensive potential conflicts in the United
Arab Emirates <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38069298>, which
happens to be enjoying U.S. support as it conducts (with Saudi Arabia) a
devastating U.S.-backed war in nearby Yemen.

Or, for that matter, a president who signed a tax plan seemingly tailor-made
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/22/trumps-tax-plan-a-billion-or-three-for-guys-like-him/>
to
save himself billions of dollars.

Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter calls
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-china-zte_us_5af9f701e4b0200bcab7fa66?utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&utm_source=politics_fb&utm_medium=facebook&section=politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013>
the
ZTE episode “yet another violation of the emoluments clause of the
Constitution,” which bans the president from taking money from foreign
governments. If that feels quaint to point out at this point, it’s no less
quaint to recall that Trump first pledged to divest himself of his Trump
Organization holdings, and then backtracked
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2017/01/11/donald-trump-will-hand-over-business/>.
(And then pledged not to open any new foreign business while he was in
office, and then backtracked
<http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-no-foreign-deals-pledge-came-asterisk>on
that too.)

The ZTE case is ripe with Trump’s favorite punching bags—China, Iran, North
Korea. It’s low-hanging fruit for his complaints about trade as well as
national security. So if Trump’s not looking out for American industry in
this politically easiest of cases, or even heeding his own leery military,
you can bet he’s not looking out for out-of-work factory linemen in
Michigan, Ohio, or Pennsylvania either.

He’s looking out, as always, for the gaudy letters emblazoned on the front
of his tacky hotels.
Share this:

   - Print
   <https://fpif.org/actually-trump-loves-chinese-goods-so-long-as-they-make-him-richer/#print>
   -
   - inShare
   -
   -
   -

*Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies
and the editor of Foreign Policy In Focus.*


Manuel Pérez-Rocha
Associate Fellow
Institute for Policy Studies
1301 Connecticut Ave NW #600, Washington, DC 20036
*More than 50 years of turning ideas into action! *
Cel. 240-838-6623
www.ips-dc.org
http://www.ips-dc.org/issues/trade/
Follow me on Twitter @ManuelPerezIPS
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20180531/e6d2b588/attachment.html>