Exclusive–‘Blood Money’ Author Peter Schweizer Dismisses Sincerity of Biden’s China Tariff Tough Talk
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Peter Schweizer, the author of Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, dismissed President Joe Biden's plan to call for raising tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum during a campaign speech to American steelworkers in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
“Joe Biden has given Beijing pretty much everything they want for three and a half years. China knows that Biden has to sometimes take aim at them. But Beijing regards his policies broadly as being highly favorable to them. They call this, ‘Big help with a little bad mouth,'” Schweizer said in an exclusive quote to Breitbart News.
Biden, during a campaign stop speaking to the United Steelworkers union in Pennsylvania — a critical 2024 battleground state, will reportedly call on his United States Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, to triple the existing 7.5 percent tariff rates on steel and aluminum from China, amid labor unions' concerns about Chinese competition and the future of the U.S. steel industry.
As the Democrat presidential candidate in 2020, Biden had previously opposed tariffs on Chinese imports when former President Donald Trump had imposed them, and said he would remove them, according to Forbes.
“Would you keep the tariffs?” Biden was asked.
“No. Hey, look,” Biden responded. “Who said Trump's idea is a good one?” before adding, “We're going after China the wrong way.”
In our #nabjnahj2020 interview, @JoeBiden tells me that Trump's China tarriffs have been disastrous for business and farming. Watch our exchange here: pic.twitter.com/QuDQ1aOmPO
— Lulu NYT (@lourdesgnavarro) August 5, 2020
Biden then said he had spent “a fair amount of time when I was vice president with [Chinese President] Xi,” and called for international pressure on China. “That's when Chinese behavior is going to change,” he claimed.
USA Today noted that Biden's latest call to raise tariffs on China “is borrowing from the trade playbook of former President Donald Trump, the Republican presumptive nominee, who routinely raised tariffs on Chinese goods during his four years in office.”
Despite Biden's tough talk on China, as a senator, he helped in 2001 to “usher in” China's entry into the World Trade Organization, where it still benefits from developing nation status.
“The United States welcomes the emergence of a prosperous, integrated China on the global stage, because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules,” Biden said at the time, according to the New York Times.
But Biden's tune has changed ahead of the 2024 election, as he faces Trump, who famously took a hardline against unfair trade practices from China and other countries.
President Joe Biden (right) and Chinese Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping walk together after a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
There is indication that labor unions — which are historically pro-Democrat — have been warming up to Trump. The Teamsters' political action committee donated $45,000 to the Republican National Committee in January for the first time in 20 years, after its leader's second meeting with Trump.
Schweizer's book detailed how the Biden family has benefitted from business deals with Chinese businessmen with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
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