(National Sentinel) Winning: Remember with the chorus of Democrats, RINOs and assorted #NeverTrumpers declared that the president’s levying of tariffs against China would never lead to better trade conditions between Washington and Beijing?
Well, we do. And guess what? Following what many believed was a horrible week for POTUS Donald Trump’s China policy following the arrest of a top Chinese telecom exec in Canada.
Meng Wanzhou, 46, the chief financial officer of mega-Chinese telecom Huawei, the largest in the world, was detained as she was changing planes in Vancouver. The ‘experts’ claimed that the arrest derailed any hope of reaching an acceptable trade agreement with Beijing.
Well, Beijing just blinked. Big time.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal:
China agreed to reduce tariffs on U.S. autos to 15%, down from 40% currently, during a phone call with U.S. officials that opened the latest round of trade talks aimed at settling a trade dispute festering between the world’s two largest economic powers, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu He informed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer of the move in a phone call late Monday evening, Washington time, according to the person, which restarted trade talks between the two nations. It wasn’t clear when the change would take effect, but Washington is pushing Beijing to make concessions as soon as possible.
That’s not all. In addition:
As part of the trade truce reached between Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump, Chinese officials are also considering making changes to the Made in China 2025 plan, a state-led industrial policy aimed at enabling Chinese companies to dominate a number of industries such as artificial intelligence and robotics, said people familiar with the matter. The policy is a focal point of U.S. complaints that Beijing engages in unfair trade practices that put foreign firms at a disadvantage to Chinese companies.
So not only has POTUS Trump and his economic team managed to get China to make substantial concessions on automobile imports, the administration is actually making progress in convincing China to alter one of its long-held economic policies.
The only way these developments could happen is if the U.S. — and President Trump — held the advantage over Beijing, not the other way around.
Speaking of tariffs, American corporatists, RINOs and #NeverTrumpers have criticized POTUS for his supposed ‘anti-free trade’ approach with China and other nations including American allies Japan and the EU.
How does levying a 40 percent tariff on American automobile imports qualify as “free trade?” And has China ever been a “free trade partner?” Or is it only “free trade’ when the U.S. allows its imports to be taxed while refusing to tax another country’s imports at the same level?
By definition tariffs are not “free trade,” but by demonstration “free trade” cannot be a one-way street, either. POTUS knows and understands that better than the “experts” in the U.S. corporate world and the Congress, apparently.
We’re not counting on the Democrat-aligned “mainstream media” to report much on this, but we felt this development was a substantial foreign policy and trade victory not just for Team Trump but for America in general.
Especially given the events last week involving Huawei.
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