Exclusive | Don’t wait for a friendly White House, Steve Bannon tells China
- A Democrat will be just as tough on Beijing, former Trump adviser predicts
- Strategist says the relationship between the two countries will be a central issue in the 2020 campaign
Beijing should give up any hope that it can wait out the Donald Trump years for a less antagonistic administration, according to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who predicts that China will feature prominently in the 2020 US presidential election.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Bannon also launched a blistering attack on the Wall Street “corporatists”, saying they had been working together with China’s ruling elites to preserve “an unfair system” and hurt the interests of American workers.
Bannon – often credited with masterminding the populist movement that helped get Trump elected in 2016 – parted ways with the president the following year after a high-profile falling out. These days he runs the Committee on the Present Danger – a cold war-era advocacy group that, under his leadership, now targets China.
While Bannon did not say if he would be involved in Trump’s re-election campaign, he predicted that the US relationship with China would be a central issue in the race and that the next president – whoever wins – would get tough on Beijing.
“The China relationship is going to be the central theme of this election of 2020,” Bannon said. “The person who’s going to be elected in 2020 is going to be Donald Trump, but if it’s not, the person who wins the election, be it a Democrat or not, will be as big or a bigger hawk than Donald Trump.”
“Trump is the US president exactly for the reason of China. He won the presidency on one thing – the focus on the rust belt,” he said. “In the 2020 campaign, the central issue will be America’s economic relationship with China. The Democrats are just as hard on this as the Republicans.”
Although many Washington pundits agree that anti-China sentiment is now a bipartisan policy position, views differ on how much blame China deserves for the loss of American jobs.
Former Trump official says Beijing can afford to wait for a trade deal
“There is a bipartisan consensus that China is America’s greatest long-term strategic challenge,” said Robert Daly of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington.
“But China is not the primary cause of the devastation of the rust belt and rural America, increasing economic inequality, social injustice, the federal deficit, the legitimisation of anger as the engine of American politics, or America’s declining competitiveness. That’s on us.”
While blaming China for the long-term decline in US manufacturing jobs helped Trump win in 2016, forced technology transfers and other intellectual property issues affecting the ability of foreign companies to access China’s market were used to justify the trade war he started nearly a year ago.
An investigation into China’s intellectual property practices under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, conducted by the Office of the US Trade Representative, provided the legal basis for Trump to impose tariffs on nearly half of all Chinese imports.
Trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies have escalated in recent weeks, after Trump’s sudden tariff increase on US$200 billion of Chinese goods from 10 per cent to 25 per cent, which took effect on May 10. Beijing responded with duties on US$60 billion of American products that will begin on June 1.
The tariffs hit American farmers – a key part of Trump’s support base – who Bannon said would be compensated and would support the fight with China.
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“The farmers also understand that to maintain the prosperity of the United States, you have to bring back the manufacturing jobs,” said Bannon, who has turned against the financial industry after earlier careers at Goldman Sachs and running his own investment banking company.
“The Wall Street people are trying to project fear that the stock market will collapse with Trump walking away from a trade deal. That is all lies.”
Some Democrat presidential candidates have grown more vocal about China’s trade practices, although a number have also criticised Trump for alienating America’s allies.
In a speech last week in Berlin, US senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker described China as a “totalitarian regime” that must be faced down. Another contender, Senator Bernie Sanders – a consistent critic of China’s trade practices – recently slammed Joe Biden, former vice-president and front runner for the party’s nomination, for saying China was not a threat to the US.
Bannon, who says he now communicates with his former boss only through lawyers, said Trump still had “strong ties” with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But Bannon was pessimistic that the personal relationship would be enough for the two leaders to work out a deal at the G20 summit in late June in Osaka, Japan.
“President Trump thinks very highly of President Xi, and talks to President Xi very warmly,” said Bannon, who also says he “talks to senior officials in the White House about China every day”.
“I do think President Trump will try to meet with President Xi, and that’s probably helpful that they work on the process and get this back on track … but the gaps may be too big and not bridgeable.”
Additional reporting by Robert Delaney in Washington
