Steve Bannon: Trump’s China Throw-down
Former Senior White House strategic advisor to President Trump Steve Bannon, who also served as Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, heralded Trump’s latest moves on China as “transformational.”
In a wide-ranging interview with me on May 6, Bannon, now chairman of Citizens for the Republic, a 501(c)(4) pulled no punches, as he eviscerated China, Wall Street, D.C. elites and Joe Biden.
“President Trump is the President of the United States because working-class people and middle-class people were tired of this kind of managed decline of the American elites,” Bannon said.
“The Hillary Clintons, Wall Street corporatists, what I call party elites. They managed the purposeful decline of the United States, which was at its highest level in the upper Midwest in our manufacturing belt,” Bannon explained.
“The great manufacturing industrial base that drove America to become a world power was in decay. The decline of that is exactly why the United States was starting to sink in the world.
Working class people rejected it. Donald Trump offered a return to American greatness, and principally about protecting American workers, and also returning manufacturing jobs to the United States. That’s why today [Monday] is one of the most important days of Trump’s presidency.”
KEY EXCERPTS
Bannon: Trump’s trade policies and bringing U.S. manufacturing jobs roaring back is the beating heart of the competition of the 21st century. [Trump] acutely recognizes the economic war that China has been running against the United States for the last 25 years.
This is not the Chinese people. The Chinese people are as decent and hard-working as any people on Earth.
This is this radical cadre of the Chinese communist party. President Xi, Wang Qishan, and others, these radicals that are determined to basically destroy the United States as a major industrial power, and this war have been going on for a quarter of a century.
It’s been supported by the corporatists in this country, and throughout the world, and also Wall Street. The big investment banks, the big commercial banks, the big hedge funds, they all collude with the Chinese communist party.
BANNON BLASTS BIDEN
Bannon: And Joe Biden, to say the other day, in the middle of this intense negotiation, will talk about what President Trump’s done in the last 48 hours, which is quite historic. In the middle of this negotiation, Joe Biden says last week, “China’s not a competitor to us.”
This virtually disqualifies him to be a serious candidate for President of the United States. I would hope that the populists in the Democratic Party, the people that follow Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would finally engage him and take him to the task.
He [Biden] is nothing more than a representative of the Obama/Clinton globalist clique.
IS BIDEN COMPROMISED ON CHINA?
Bannon: Joe Biden has tremendous conflicts of interest when it comes to China.
We did Government Accountability, which is an organization I chaired and oversaw for years, while I was also at Breitbart with Peter Schweizer.
We did Clinton Cash. It took us years to do that research that came and got Clinton Cash.
Clinton Cash was one of the instruments we bludgeoned Hillary Clinton with about her corruption, right? And her incompetence. But particularly her corruption with the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative. After that book came out right before its publication, we shifted to a new topic, and that was China’s influence peddling among America’s political elite, and one of the people we focused on Joe Biden, and the reason was that Joe Biden of 2013 led an official delegation over to China on a whole series of issues with the Chinese, and he took his son Hunter with him.
Shortly thereafter, Hunter and his partner, who is the son of Theresa Heinz, John Kerry’s stepson, announced that they formed a private equity firm with a $1.5 billion investment by the Bank of China.
Now the Bank of China directly reports to the Chinese Community Party and to the President of China unlike any other central bank in the G20.
It reports directly to the political apparatus. It’s not like the Federal Reserve, it’s not like the Bank of England, it’s not like the Bank of Tokyo, this reports directly to the communist political apparatus.
So essentially, the senior members of the Chinese Communist Party funded Biden’s son, who by the way has no background in finance, he’s completely incompetent and has absolutely zero chance of raising that type of money in either Wall Street or London.
They basically infused him with an initial $1 billion to aid him, and then added another $500 million for a total investment of $1.5 billion and Peter Schweizer details this quite substantially in this book Secret Empires, and Biden has got to come clean. Joe Biden has to come clean with how much money his family has made off the Chinese Communist Party.
What’s his involvement? And I think they’re looking at this facial technology of his company and this artificial intelligence, which enslaves the Chinese people. The Chinese people enslaved by this firewall, they’re enslaved by this technology.
I believe when you look at the investments that Hunter Biden’s company is actually invested in Chinese technology companies.
And so Joe Biden can squirm and he can try to get away from this, but he’s got to have to be held accountable and he will be held accountable, and I would hope that Bernie Sanders — particularly Bernie Sanders who had a chance to do this to Hillary Clinton — and failed miserably in the primary of 2016. Given another shot, Sanders should hold a globalist like Joe Biden accountable to this.
But for Biden to sit there in Iowa and say, “Hey, they’re [China] not a competitor to us,” it shows you how I think how clueless Biden is, and maybe it’s something more serious, and maybe that his interests are aligned with China and the members of the CCP because of his financial interest.
John: Steve, the question becomes: is Joe Biden clueless or compromised when it comes to China?
Bannon: Hunter Biden went to Pittsburgh, and Joe Biden went to Iowa, and Joe Biden is sitting there trying to tell Trump voters, “I’m really the real deal. Donald Trump is a phony.”
Joe Biden was there for all eight years in the Obama administration, and all they did was surrender. All they did was surrender every day to China. They allowed the manufacturing jobs to be shipped overseas, Joe Biden was there for every day, but Joe Biden didn’t do anything. When China built these islands in the South China Sea, which is one of the most provocative things that have happened in global affairs in the last 15 to 20 years — these are essentially aircraft carriers that the Chinese use to restrict trade and navigation in the South China Sea — which I take over $5 trillion dollars of world trade that’s still there today, and is absolutely essential for our allies like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan to have free navigation of the South China Sea to make sure that they’re free.
Joe Biden was there with Obama when they looked the other way.
I believe that the building of those islands and the cratering of America showed Asia that that was like Munich. That was our Munich of the 21st Century. Biden was there for that. Biden was there, which he came to the Rose Garden 2014 and signed a deal with Obama in front of the American people and said, “We’re not going to do any more cyber theft, no more cyber intrusions.”
And all the Chinese did after that was double down or tripled it.
TRUMP TO CHINA: NO DEAL, CHEATER
BANNON: You can see with what President Trump has had to go through within the last 48 hours, and that was basically to tell the Chinese, “You’re not going to renegotiate us. This deal is going to be a real deal, and we’re going to go public with exactly with what you’ve been doing, and you’re going to agree to not do it again, and we’re going to have a legal contract that shows you’re not going to do it again, or we’re going to have tariffs as a hammer to make sure you don’t do it again, and we’re not only going to let the world know that in this deal, the Chinese people are going to know that.”
One of the things that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to stop is having full promulgation of this deal out into the local and regional authorities in China, and we’re trying to do that to make sure what Trump is doing to have some teeth in this deal, so just not happy talk.
Biden is just one of these glad-handers that’s nothing but happy talk. He hasn’t done anything for working-class people, and if he’s done it, he’s got a point to his time in the Obama administration on what he did on trade.
It was President Trump to put the tariffs in to start bringing steel jobs back, aluminum jobs back, it’s President Trump that focused on forced technology transfers and technology theft where the Chinese are ripping off American companies. That’s Donald Trump.
Joe Biden was there for eight years, did absolutely nothing except take $1.5 billion dollars from the Chinese Communist Party, and that’s how some of them make a living.
We got to find out how. Look, I would hate to say that Biden is compromised. He’s certainly clueless and incompetent, but we got to drill down and get the facts of what his involvement, his family’s involvement financially is with the Chinese Communist Party, and what companies they finance in China.
WALL ST. COMPLICIT IN U.S. MANAGED DECLINE
John: Trump said, “Hey, I’m going to go back to the 25 percent tariffs on another $300 billion dollars of Chinese goods because I just want to get progress.” What did you think of that?
Bannon: Listen, let’s go back to the economic debt, and I think where these two parties stand. If you look at the 3.2 percent growth that was announced last Friday a week ago, the 1 percent that was over the 2.2 that nobody guessed came from, us decreasing the trade deficit with China, and also part of the great jobs number. What this is showing is we’re starting to bring jobs back, people are starting to turn those to Chinese goods. This is the heart of the Trump economic program. Trump’s strategy is working, and Wall Street hates it. Wall Street hates it because it’s cutting them off. Remember, Wall Street is vested in relations with the Chinese…for the CCP.
Wall Street has always been against Trump in this matter, and this is why President Trump, I think, feels now as I see it. That his economic program is working, and he’s not about to break to the Chinese. He’s going to have a real deal. The key line in those two tweets is we’re not going to allow renegotiating.
Donald Trump is not going to be re-traded, and I think the key to the re-trades is central of these huge issues about subsidies estate on the industries, subsidies through advanced manufacturing that they’re trying to do, forced technology transfers, everything that talks about the advanced manufacturing that will drive the American economically and the world economically in the 21st century.
Donald Trump is fighting for you and your kids right now…and that’s why this is the most important thing we’re working on, and it’s the most important thing that the Trump administration has been working on.
It’s why this Russia hoax is such a joke. This is the heart of what the great economic war of the 21st century is, and this is what Trump is focused on every day. And he also said, “We’re going to have a deal that has teeth, and you’re going to abide by it.” And what the Chinese are trying to do is their old trick, not to get the word out, not to let people know what these deals really are.
Trump is trying to force the Chinese Communist Party to make sure this is promulgated legislatively in China down the local and regional levels, so the Chinese people can understand what the regime and the CCP in Beijing have been trying to do because the Chinese people essentially are our allies in this.
Remember, we have a world right now that’s a house divided. Half slave and half free.
It’s the Chinese people that have been enslaved by this radical cadre of the CCP. That’s what President Trump is trying to break is their continual lies and misrepresentations to their own people, and also to businesses, and the financial community, and people in the United States.
This is the heart of the return of American greatness, this is what Wall Street and the corporatists fought tooth and nail, you see from the numbers it’s working, and I think that tweet was monumental.
I think it’s one of the most powerful things he’s done in his Presidency, and he’s saying, “Hey, if we don’t have a deal that’s a deal on my terms, we’re going to hit you with across the board dramatic increases in tariffs.”
Now the Chinese and particularly the hawks in China are sitting and going, “Hey, our systems are working fine for us right now. Why do we need the Americans? Let’s call their bluff. Let’s call Trump’s bluff.”
So this thing is going to get very nasty and very contentious over the next couple of weeks.
CHICOM HAWKS
John: If the Chinese call Trump’s potential bluff, what happens Steve?
Bannon: The Chinese are going to see reality. Their economy right now is down from historic highs … It’s publicly reported. They put phony numbers that say 6.9 percent growth. I think most people think if you talk to sophisticated people that follow this its anywhere from 1.9 to 3.5 percent growth. If Trump increases these tariffs that could cut that growth in half. To a large extent, they are struggling. With people around at the hardcore level of the CCP around Xi, look at this One Belt, One Road conference they had last week with 70 nations showed up to basically take money from the Chinese in this One Belt, One Road, which is this project they try to unite the Eurasian landmass.
The Chinese, by printing a lot of RNB, I feel that they’ve got a system right now that can at least work in the short term, and so they don’t want to change, and they particularly can’t change when it comes to forced technology transfers. They do not have the innovation right now of Silicon Valley, so they have to basically steal or force that innovation from Japan and the United States and Western Europe into their system.
If Trump’s program stops that, Trump’s program also stops the subsidies these state-owned industries.
China is exporting deflation and overcapacity. That’s why in Japan, the United States and Europe, you have a very tough time raising prices. You have a very tough time getting wages increased, and the reason is that China has so much overcapacity, and continues to pound state money into that that gives them a very unfair comparative advantage.
That’s also what Trump is trying to stop in this deal. I mean this deal is highly negotiated. Bob Lighthizer, our Ambassador Head of US Trade Representatives, one of the best deal lawyers around, he’s really Trump’s wingman on this, and he’s done a terrific job, but now you’re down to the nitty-gritty, and the Chinese, as they always do, are trying to re-trade, and you finally have a President of the United States unlike Biden, and unlike Obama, and unlike Bush.
Clinton, Bush, and the Obama factions have all basically kowtowed to China. Donald Trump is the first guy to stand up, and he stood up for a reason. He realizes this is why he’s President of the United States– the American people rejected this managed decline by the American elites, and this is why Trump is President. He understands this is central for his Presidency, and also for the good of the nation.