Trump’s continuing foolishness in international trade decenters the US economy not so much in favor of China as it is favoring Russia (see oil profits for oligarchs while claiming murder is OK for Saudi Arabia).
Trump defends his cluelessness as the G-20 approaches, falling back on the usual BS.
Q How prepared are you for this meeting with President Xi? How are you preparing for it? And how confident are you that you got a deal?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm very prepared. I've been preparing for it all my life. You know, it's not like, "Oh, gee, I'm going to sit down and study." I know every ingredient. I know every stat. I know it better than anybody knows it. And my gut has always been right. And we're doing very well, and I will tell you, China very much wants to make a deal. China has been taking advantage of the United States for many, many years. They have taken out four-, five-, and six-hundred billion dollars a year. That doesn’t include the theft of intellectual property, which has been horrible, what they've been doing.
And, you know, it's not a question of preparing. I think I've prepared for this meeting -- I had a meeting literally right in that corner with President Xi. We have a great relationship. I like him a lot. I think he likes me. Probably likes me less now than he did before we did what we're doing.
But we've picked up trillions of dollars in value. And China has lost trillions of dollars in value since I'm President. Trillions. Many trillions in value. And we've picked up many trillions of dollars in value.
And we are a true economic power, far greater than we were before I became President. We are an economic power that is far greater than we were. When we were -- when I took over, we were teetering. We were in bad shape. We were going down to minus-four, minus-five, minus-six percent in GDP. Instead, last quarter, we had 4.2 percent.
And we are doing very well. I can say this: China wants to make a deal very badly --
Q Do you think it's going to happen next week?
THE PRESIDENT: -- because of the tariffs. Because right now, on $250 billion, they'll be paying us, as of January 1st, 25 percent. And in many cases, they're already paying 25 percent. On the rest that they're not, they're paying 10. But the 10 percent goes to 25 percent on January 1st. And so they're going to be paying a tremendous amount of money, which, frankly, is great for our country. We're taking in billions of dollars from China. We never took in 10 cents from China. They took everything from us; we never took anything from them.
Now, as of already, we're taking in -- right now, we're taking in billions. China is -- people don’t understand this: China is right now paying us -- right now, paying us billions of dollars a month. That's never happened before. And soon, they're going to be paying us many, many billions of dollars a month.
But China wants to make a deal. If we can make a deal, we will.
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If President Trump is the dealmaker he claims to be, he should use the upcoming Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires to declare a win in his trade war with China — before his bombast does any more damage to the global economy.
Trade is Trump’s signature issue. But more than a year after he began threatening tariffs against major trading partners, he has relatively little to show for it. The improvements in the North American Free Trade Agreement are modest at best. The U.S. economy hasn’t suffered significantly, but global growth is beginning to slow, and trade jitters are one reason.
The International Monetary Fund warned last month that it was lowering its global growth projections by 0.2 percentage points for 2018 and 2019, in part because of “rising trade barriers.” The IMF explained: “Escalating trade tensions and the potential shift away from a multilateral, rules-based trading system are key threats to the global outlook. . . . An increase in trade barriers would disrupt global supply chains . . . and slow the spread of new technologies, ultimately lowering global productivity and welfare.”