Posted on 02/14/2019 2:03:05 AM PST by cba123
Robert Lighthizer has spent his entire career preparing for the next two weeks of negotiations with China. The Trump administration’s 71-year-old U.S. trade representative was one of the earliest and most forceful opponents of China’s admission to the World Trade Organization. He derided as “wishful thinking” the idea then popular in both the Republican and Democratic parties that greater trade would lead to a more open, market-oriented and responsible China. Having lost that battle when the Clinton administration supported China’s WTO entry, he complained as trade between the United States and China grew more and more imbalanced, resulting in trade deficits he termed “catastrophic and unsustainable.”
Now, he finds himself in a position to do something about it. Lighthizer is leading the U.S. delegation to Beijing this week for what will be the most critical meeting yet in the high-stakes trade conflict between the United States and China. He is tasked with persuading or bullying Chinese leaders into what are euphemistically called “structural reforms,” policy changes that somehow force China off its path of using state power to capture new industries and supplant U.S. leadership in the critical technologies of the future.
He is doing so against a March 1 deadline in which the United States has threatened to hit China with far more costly penalties on $200 billion in imports, raising tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent. And he is doing so working for a weakened President Donald Trump, who appears badly to want a “big deal” that will gratify Wall Street investors and reinforce his personal friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Rarely has a U.S. Cabinet-level official been asked to deliver so much in so little time against such long odds.
(Please see full article at the link)
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Finally.
Give them heck, Sir.
:)
By the way, I am not saying Trump is the problem.
Not at all.
But we have been BADLY sold out, for the last generation and a half.
Badly.
Yeah.
Think about those TENS of THOUSANDS of businesses that scuttled off to Chinkna.....
.....................per MONTH back in the day!
THEN—they “lend” us the $$$ to buy back all the stuff we should have made ourselves.
Creating “debt” we won’t be able to repay.
This is called “economic warfare”, boys and girls—in case you haven’t noticed—or have not BEEN TOLD.
(So is a little thing called DEBT REPUDIATION—don’cha know. That knife of theirs cuts both ways.)
“And he is doing so working for a weakened President Donald Trump, who appears badly to want a “big deal” that will gratify Wall Street investors and reinforce his personal friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.”
This is comedy, right?
Finally, Indeed.
This is the big one folks. With all due respect to bakers and wall-builders or whatever —
This is what matters, this is why he can make a difference as President.
“And he is doing so working for a weakened President Donald Trump, who appears badly to want a “big deal” that will gratify Wall Street investors and reinforce his personal friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.”
This is comedy, right?”
Ah yes. Polutionco wants morons to believe the trade Rep is all on his own and this hasn’t been one of the key platforms of President Trump.
“...he is doing so working for a weakened President Donald Trump...”
Huh? Who the heck believes this to be true? My observation is that with each week, Trump is more and more powerful.
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