A man of principle

Pr. Peter Navarro Has Not Made His Peace With China
Pr. Navarro is still looking for ways to punish China even as Trump has embraced a deal that his top trade adviser lobbied against.

By Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson

Pr.Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to President Trump, has influenced American trade policy toward China and pressed for stiff tariffs over the objections of pro-China advisers.

WASHINGTON — When Trump gathered his top economic advisers at the White House to decide whether to make a deal with China, Pr. Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, was ready with a flurry of arguments against the move.
A deal that removed any of Trump’s tariffs would make America look weak, Mr. Navarro argued at the meeting two weeks ago, and he assailed those who endorsed the idea as “globalists.”
It was a familiar argument for Trump’s top trade adviser, who has spent the past three years encouraging the president to embark on a punishing trade war with China. 

Mr. Navarro’s dark warnings about China’s ambitions and its threat to America have fueled Trump’s embrace of tariffs, overcoming the objections of other pro-China advisers.
This time, however, Trump was not persuaded. 

With the 2020 election approaching, Trump dismissed Mr. Navarro’s concerns, opting for an initial deal with China that would reduce some tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for a commitment from Beijing to buy more American products and a series of promises to resolve other concerns.
“The deal with China is a massive deal,” Trump pompously said at an event about deregulation at the White House last week, adding: “No, I’m not a globalist.”
Mr. Navarro declined to comment on the events of the meeting.
“What happens in the Oval should stay in the Oval, both for the sanctity and security of the internal discussions and for the good of the country,” Mr. Navarro said.
For three years, Mr. Navarro, 70, has been Trump’s trade warrior, pushing the president to rip up trade deals and rewrite them so they are more favorable to American workers. 

An academic with little previous government or business experience, Mr. Navarro has managed to exert enormous influence over United States trade policy by tapping into the president’s disdain for globalization and encouraging his view that China has been “robbing us blind.”

His pro-China colleagues have chafed at his aggressive approach to China and have tried to block Mr. Navarro’s access to the president.

Mr. Navarro has gained power inside the White House and Trump has often requested his presence at big events, including a meeting with Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires last year.

Still, Mr. Navarro’s thinking has become deeply influential. 

Even those who disagree with him on economic policy and China increasingly tend to credit him for having guided the political debate.
“For all the criticism he gets from the free trade wing of the Republican Party, he was one of the first people to ring the alarm on China years ago,” said Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who also advised Trump’s 2016 campaign. 

“Now more people, including myself, look at China’s trade policies as really predatory and economically harmful.”
With Trump moving to ease tensions with his favorite geopolitical foil and with trade deals with Canada, Mexico, Japan and South Korea now complete, Mr. Navarro is at a something of a crossroads — a trade warrior looking for a new fight.
Mr. Navarro has embraced under-the-radar projects aimed at curbing China’s economic power, including efforts to increase inspections of Chinese packages at the ports and renegotiating Chinese postal fees. 

And many China hawks believe that the government’s long history of shirking economic pledges will ultimately vindicate his distrust of an agreement that does little to alter China’s behavior at home.
“I would be very skeptical of any significant agreement being made,” said Greg Autry, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and author with Mr. Navarro of the book “Death by China.” 

“If you’ve spent any time watching the Chinese, they don’t honor their agreements.”
Mr. Navarro’s entry into Trump’s orbit was not exactly predictable. 

A business professor at the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Navarro ran and lost five elections as a progressive Democrat — including unsuccessful bids for mayor of San Diego and California’s 49th Congressional District.
As a candidate in the 1990s and 2000s, Mr. Navarro supported abortion rights, gay rights, environmental protection and higher taxes on the rich.
He even spoke at the 1996 Democratic Convention and campaigned that year with Hillary Clinton.
In his book “San Diego Confidential,” Mr. Navarro described Mrs. Clinton as “one of the most gracious, intelligent, perceptive, and, yes, classy women I have ever met.”
“It is such as dramatic change from how he portrayed himself when he was in the political field in San Diego,” said Doug Case, a former president of the San Diego Democratic Club.
“It looks like maybe his true colors have come out.”
After his political career sputtered, Mr. Navarro continued teaching and writing books about business and investing.
But before long, his attention turned to China and its trade practices which were killing American jobs.
Mr. Navarro’s skepticism first emerged in the 1970s while he was a Peace Corps volunteer building and repairing fish ponds in Thailand.
He traveled extensively in Asia and observed the negative impact China was having on the economies of its neighbors. 
He became increasingly critical of how China’s trade practices were impacting the United States after its admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001, particularly as many of his business students complained of losing their jobs as a result of Chinese competition.
Mr. Navarro’s views soon hardened and he began publishing a series of anti-China books, including “The Coming China Wars,” which Mr. Trump in 2011 listed as one of his favorite books about China, and “Death By China.”
In that book and the accompanying documentary, Mr. Navarro and Mr. Autry excoriated China for unscrupulous economic practices and manufacturing deadly products, like flammable toddler overalls and fake Viagra.
They also faulted multinational companies like Walmart for using China to source cheap goods that were putting American manufacturers out of business.
Mr. Navarro’s views caught the attention of then-candidate Donald J. Trump, who shared similar opinions about China’s impact on American manufacturing and was seeking experts with views that matched his own.
Mr. Navarro joined the campaign as an economic adviser in 2016 and quickly gained the trust of Mr. Trump, who refers to Mr. Navarro as “my tough guy on China.”
“My whole philosophy in life and in this job is the Gretzky perspective — skate to where the puck is going to be, anticipate problems that the president is going to want to solve, and get on them,” Mr. Navarro said in an interview.
Early on in Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Navarro’s influence was not assured.
Mr. Navarro joined the White House with multiple trade actions written and ready for the president’s signature, including a directive to begin withdrawing the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement or “Shafta,” as Mr. Navarro liked to call NAFTA.
But opposition from other advisers, including "globalist" Gary D. Cohn, the former head of the National Economic Council, stayed the president’s hand.
For months, it seemed like Cohn and his allies had succeeded in muzzling Mr. Navarro — blocking at least three attempts to trigger the NAFTA withdrawal process, as well as an earlier directive to impose steel tariffs and withdraw from a South Korea trade agreement.
But as Mr. Trump’s signature tax cut neared fruition in late 2017, the president grew more anxious to translate his trade promises into policy.
“Where are my tariffs? Bring me my tariffs,” the president would say, and call in his advisers to debate trade policy in front of him.

Mr. Trump has embraced tariffs on imported metals and Chinese goods at the behest of Mr. Navarro.

Mr. Navarro, sometimes joined by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, would recommend tariffs, arguing they would protect domestic industries, demonstrate the president was serious about reversing lopsided trade agreements and raise revenue.
Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former staff secretary Rob Porter regularly rebutted those arguments, saying tariffs would harm businesses, the stock market and the president’s re-election chances.
To help buttress his case, Mr. Navarro developed a red, black and yellow chart outlining “China’s Acts, Policies, & Practices of Economic Aggression,” including cyberespionage and theft of American intellectual property. 
Mr. Navarro warned Mr. Trump that China had long promised — and failed — to alter its behavior and said tariffs were the most effective way to force Beijing to change.
By 2018, Mr. Trump was ready to pounce, and Mr. Navarro’s vision of confronting China became reality.
An initial 25 percent tax on $34 billion of Chinese goods in July 2018 quickly escalated to tariffs on $360 billion of products with a threat to tax nearly every Chinese product.
The economic pressure brought Beijing to the negotiating table but Trump ultimately backed down, agreeing to a Phase 1 trade deal that would reduce some tariffs and remove the threat of additional levies in exchange for China buying more farm goods and giving American companies more access to the Chinese market.
Almost none of the big structural changes that Mr. Navarro had pushed for were included.
Trump has said those will be addressed in future talks with China, and many of the tariffs Mr. Navarro recommended will stay in place.
Mr. Navarro has found other ways to counter China.
Earlier this year he waged a successful offensive against a global postal treaty that had allowed Chinese businesses to ship international packages at much cheaper rates than the United States.
He’s helped step up inspections of Chinese packages to crack down on online counterfeiting and gotten involved with a project to revive American shipyards. 
Earlier this year, when executives at Crowley Maritime Corp. told Mr. Navarro that the Navy was in the process of procuring a transport ship from China that would be modified to American specifications, Mr. Navarro personally intervened to scuttle the bid.
He has come to view his office as akin to a special forces unit within the federal bureaucracy.
“With a small office, I learned early that the real power of being at the White House and the real effectiveness stems from leverage — on any given day, one or more government agencies are helping with this office’s mission,” he said.
“You don’t need to be a big bloated bureaucracy. All you need be is lean and flat and nimble enough to harness agency resources for the president and his agenda.”

The Art of the Deal

President Trump says he is in no rush to complete China trade deal

By Steve Holland, Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he was in no rush to complete a trade pact with China and insisted that any deal include protection for intellectual property, a major sticking point between the two sides during months of negotiations.
Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping had been expected to hold a summit at the president’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida later this month, but no date has been set for a meeting and no in-person talks between their trade teams have been held in more than two weeks.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that a meeting between the two was more likely to take place in April at the earliest.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that there “were rumblings” in Washington about a possible meeting in late April.
The president, speaking to reporters at the White House, said he thought there was a "good chance" a deal would be made, in part because China wanted one after suffering from U.S. tariffs on its goods.
But he acknowledged Xi may be wary of coming to a summit without an agreement in hand after seeing President Trump end a separate summit in Vietnam with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without a peace deal.
“I think Xi saw that I’m somebody that believes in walking when the deal is not done, and you know there’s always a chance it could happen and he probably wouldn’t want that,” Trump said.
China has not made any public comment confirming Xi is considering going to meet Trump in Florida or elsewhere.
The president, who likes to emphasize his own deal-making abilities, said an agreement to end a months-long trade war could be finished ahead of a presidential meeting or completed in-person with his counterpart.
“We could do it either way. We could have the deal completed and come and sign, or we could get the deal almost completed and negotiate some of the final points. I would prefer that,” he said.
President Trump decided last month not to increase tariffs on Chinese goods at the beginning of March, giving a nod to the success of negotiations so far.
But hurdles remain, and intellectual property is one of them. 

Washington accuses Beijing of forcing U.S. companies to share their intellectual property and transfer their technology to local partners in order to do business in China. 

Asked on Wednesday if intellectual property had to be included in a trade deal, Trump said: “Yes it does.”
He indicated that from his perspective, a meeting with Xi was still likely.
“I think things are going along very well -- we’ll just see what the date is,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
“I’m in no rush. I want the deal to be right... I am not in a rush whatsoever. It’s got to be the right deal. It’s got to be a good deal for us and if it’s not, we’re not going to make that deal.”

‘MAINTAINING CONTACT’
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Xi had previously told Trump that he is willing to “maintain contacts” with the U.S. president.
China industrial output growth falls to 17-yr low, more support steps expected
Over the weekend, Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen, who has been deeply involved in the trade talks with the United States, did not answer questions from reporters on whether Xi would go to Mar-a-Lago.
Two Beijing-based diplomatic sources, familiar with the situation, told Reuters that Xi would not be going to Mar-a-Lago, at least in the near term.
One said there had been no formal approach from the United States to China about such a trip, while the second said the problem was that China had realized a trade agreement was not going to be as easy to reach as they had initially thought.
“This is media hype,” said the first source, of reports Xi and Trump could meet this month in Florida.
Though Trump said he is not in a hurry, a trade deal this spring would give him a win to cite as an economic accomplishment as he advances his 2020 re-election campaign. 

The trade war has hurt the global economy and hung over stock markets, which would likely benefit from an end to the tensions.
In addition to smoothing over sticking points on content, the United States is eager to include a strong enforcement mechanism in a deal to ensure that Beijing can be held accountable if it breaks any of its terms.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who has spearheaded the talks from the American side, said on Tuesday that U.S. officials hoped they were in the final weeks of their talks with China but that major issues remained to be resolved.

Clown King?

Trump Undermines Top Trade Adviser as He Pushes for China Deal

By Ana Swanson

WASHINGTON — Trump has signaled that he is moving toward peace with China in a trade standoff that has rattled markets and businesses globally. 

But as he backs off his threat to impose higher tariffs, the president’s relationship with his own trade negotiator is now showing signs of strain.
The situation has left Trump’s trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, who is both an ardent supporter of the president and a longtime China critic, in an uncomfortable bind. While broad tariffs on Chinese imports brought Beijing to the negotiating table, Trump has grown impatient with the talks, and a consensus is growing in Washington that Trump will ultimately accept a weak deal.
And despite the lack of a transformative arrangement he once promised, Trump has begun dangling the idea of a “signing summit” with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort. 

As a result, Trump is undermining Mr. Lighthizer as he tries to pressure China to make big concessions.
“Trump is certainly doing his negotiating team no favors by undercutting them in public,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade expert and the former head of the China division of the International Monetary Fund. 

The president’s actions, he said, “weakens rather than fortifies Lighthizer’s leverage.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Lighthizer will testify before House lawmakers, where he will have to credibly defend a pact that is shaping up to be less ambitious than he might have hoped.
Mr. Lighthizer has publicly expressed solidarity with Trump’s goals, and those who know him say he remains loyal to Trump. 

In private, however, he has been frustrated by Trump’s superficial understanding of the trading relationship with China and his tendency to jump unpredictably into the fray.
American and Chinese negotiators have wrestled over trade terms in rounds of talks over the past year, including in Washington last week. 

Chinese negotiators have largely repackaged old promises about opening their markets to foreign companies and offered large purchases of American products that are designed to impress a president who is focused on reducing the bilateral trade deficit.
The Chinese have so far declined to make the concrete commitments to reform their economy that the administration has demanded, including ending China’s practice of subsidizing companies, engaging in cybertheft and forcing American companies to hand over intellectual property to Chinese partners in order to do business there.
Trump continues to insist that any deal with China will end “unfair” trade practices, including what he has said is theft of American technology and intellectual property. 

And negotiators are trying to insert an enforcement mechanism into any deal that would require China to return to the bargaining table if it fails to make these structural changes, a person familiar with the talks said.
But the hardened position that prompted Trump’s unprecedented imposition of sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods appears to be weakening, giving Beijing more room to maneuver and undermining Mr. Lighthizer’s goal.
On Sunday, citing “substantial progress” in trade talks, Trump backed off his March 1 deadline to impose higher tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. 

That date had been described by Mr. Lighthizer in December as a “hard deadline” and was viewed as critical to getting Beijing to agree to significant changes since its economy, already hurting from tariffs, would suffer more from higher levies.
Last week, Trump contradicted Mr. Lighthizer by lumping the fate of Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant facing criminal charges, in with the trade talks. 

Mr. Lighthizer had insisted that Huawei was “entirely a criminal justice matter” and that it had “nothing to do with anything I’m working on.” 

But on Friday, when asked whether criminal charges against Huawei could be dropped as part of an agreement, Trump said: “We’ll be talking to the U.S. attorneys. We’ll be talking to the attorney general. We’ll be making that decision.”
“His intervention has now ratcheted up the pressure on both sets of negotiators to find a path to an agreement in the coming weeks, even if the result should be a narrow and short-lived agreement,” Mr. Prasad said.
The differences between the two men mounted on Friday, as they shared a remarkable exchange in front of the press and the Chinese delegation over whether to call the current trade agreement a memorandum of understanding, or M.O.U., as Mr. Lighthizer had been doing.
“I don’t like M.O.U.s because they don’t mean anything,” Trump told Mr. Lighthizer. 

“I think you’re better off just going into a document. I was never a fan of an M.O.U.”
Mr. Lighthizer interjected to explain that, in trade negotiations, an M.O.U. is a typical term for a detailed contract between two parties.
“It’s just called a memorandum of understanding,” he said. 

“That’s a legal term.”
Trump, seemingly unhappy with being contradicted, cut back in.
“By the way, I disagree,” the president said. 

“I think that a memorandum of understanding is not a contract to the extent that we want.”
“To me, the final contract is really the thing, Bob — and I think you mean that, too — is really the thing that means something,” the president added.
Mr. Lighthizer quickly reversed course. 

“From now on, we’re not using the word memorandum of understanding anymore,” he told Trump and his Chinese counterparts. 

“We’ll have the same document. It’s going to be called a trade agreement. We’re never going to use M.O.U. again.”
“I like that much better,” Trump said.
By Sunday night, the president seemed eager to heal any rift. 

Speaking from a dinner at the White House, the president commended Mr. Lighthizer for working around the clock to secure a deal with China.
“When I was able to be lucky enough to win the presidency, I called Bob Lighthizer, because for years people have known he’s the greatest trader that we have on this type of trade — we have many different types of trade — and I really understand now why,” the president said.
With the Chinese now making only vague concessions on structural reforms, Mr. Lighthizer would prefer to stay tough and let the bite of American tariffs persuade them to make bigger promises. While he has shared with Trump the view that the Chinese are not ready to make significant concessions, the president has continued to press for a deal.
Jeff Emerson, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, denied that Mr. Lighthizer had ever been frustrated with the president, saying that he and Trump were in complete agreement on the negotiating strategy with China.
“Trump has never insisted that Ambassador Lighthizer make a deal with China and has instead told Ambassador Lighthizer he is interested only in making a ‘great deal’ with China that addresses structural issues,” Mr. Emerson added. 

“Anyone claiming otherwise either does not know what they are talking about or is deliberately pushing falsehoods.”
Mr. Lighthizer is well respected in Washington, with decades of experience in private legal practice and government, including leading trade talks with Japan in the 1980s. 

In trying to pin down the Chinese on making ambitious reforms to their economy, he has an unenviable task.
Business groups and China watchers credit the Trump administration with forcing China to finally come to the table and address longstanding concerns, including its treatment of American companies. 

And they say the administration is poised to secure greater concessions than previous administrations have.
“Bob Lighthizer has made it a priority to get this China deal right,” said Myron Brilliant, an executive vice president and the head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

“He understands that this is the moment in time in which there’s an opportunity to make a real change in the trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship, and he’s focused on the bottom line: what he can get from the Chinese that will improve the U.S.-China economic relationship.”
Mr. Lighthizer, who will testify before the House Ways and Means Committee, is expected to face tough questions from lawmakers about the state of the negotiations and whether he feels comfortable staking his legacy on the evolving China deal. 

While many Republicans are eager for the trade war to end, they are warning the administration not to settle for a weak deal. 

Democrats are already trying to outflank Trump on China and are gearing up to call any agreement that does not include structural changes a failure.
Mr. Lighthizer and other members of his office have held discussions with politicians and trade advisers of both parties, urging them to maintain their public pressure to get a substantial deal.
In a statement Monday, Daniel DiMicco, Trump’s trade adviser during the campaign and the chairman of trade group the Coalition for a Prosperous America, urged Trump to “continue his strategy of strength and leverage in the U.S. trade and geopolitical relationship with China” and to “resist short-term pressure from Wall Street.”
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, urged Trump not to cave, saying in a tweet, “No matter how many tons of soybeans they buy if #China gets to keep cheating & stealing trade secrets it won’t be a good deal for America, our workers or our national security.”
Mr. Lighthizer, a former steel industry lawyer who grew up watching factories disappear from his native Ohio, took the trade representative job in large part to shift power away from China and toward the United States. 

Mr. Lighthizer has long viewed China as an economic enemy that has engaged in unfair trade practices, destroying American industries in the process.
The potential for Trump to reach a compromise deal with China has prompted speculation in Washington that Mr. Lighthizer, like so many other administration officials, might resign. 

But while Mr. Lighthizer views changing the China dynamic as critical, his confidantes say he is unlikely to leave given his unprecedented opportunity to improve America’s terms of trade with Canada, Mexico and the European Union, as well as at the World Trade Organization.
Mr. Emerson said rumors of Mr. Lighthizer’s resignation were “a total falsehood."
Mr. Lighthizer “believes Trump is the greatest trade president in our history and is honored to help him,” Mr. Emerson said.

Michael Pillsbury Gains Prominence as President Trump Confronts Xi on Trade

By Alan Rappeport

Michael Pillsbury has spent years trying to understand China’s motivations. His realist view has made him one of President Trump’s top advisers on how to interact with Beijing.
WASHINGTON — Michael Pillsbury had just finished a rib-eye salad at the Cosmos Club on Tuesday when he received a text message from the White House: “The president is trying to reach you. Call back.”
A day later, Pillsbury huddled in the Oval Office with President Trump and senior members of the White House economic team ahead of a pivotal weekend meeting in Argentina between President Trump and Xi Jinping.
For more than an hour, President Trump, Pillsbury and advisers including Steven Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Larry Kudlow, Jared Kushner and Peter Navarro, who joined remotely from California, strategized about negotiations with China that could determine the direction of a trade war that has gripped the world’s two largest economies, spooked global markets and shaken diplomatic relations between Beijing and Washington.
President Trump and Xi are expected to dine on Saturday evening at the G-20 summit meeting in Buenos Aires, where they will talk about the possibility of a trade truce. 

The United States has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the rate of some of the levies is set to increase to 25 percent in January, from 10 percent. 

President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on all Chinese imports — an additional $267 billion — if a compromise cannot be reached.
President Trump has received conflicting advice from his trade team about how to approach China but it is Pillsbury’s counsel that the president is most likely to keep in mind.
He has emerged as a key sounding board for President Trump, who has publicly referred to Pillsbury as “the leading authority on China” on multiple occasions. (Three times, by Pillsbury’s count, who said sales of his 2015 manifesto on China have soared as a result.)
Ubiquitous on Fox News in recent months, Pillsbury’s book “The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower” has become a lodestar for those in the West Wing pushing for a more forceful response to the threat that China’s rise poses to the United States.
“We could not have shifted the entire apparatus to this confrontational mode with China if it wasn’t for the intellectual architecture of ‘A Hundred-Year Marathon,’” said Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist who recruited Pillsbury as an adviser during the transition and used to hand out copies of his book around the White House.
The book, which was published while Pillsbury was advising the Obama administration as a Pentagon consultant, presents an accurate view of China as a clever enemy with a stealthy plan to overtake the United States as the dominant world power by 2049 — a century after the People’s Republic was founded.

In his book, Pillsbury describes China’s approach as one of deception, in which its leaders use America’s belief that it can democratize China to “mislead and manipulate American policymakers to obtain intelligence and military, technological and economic assistance.”
Pillsbury plays into this argument with President Trump, arguing that the clash between the United States and China has evolved precisely because President Trump’s agenda to restore America’s “greatness” is so directly at odds with Xi’s own political doctrine for modernizing China, known officially as “Xi Jinping Thought.”
“They take ‘Make America Great Again’ very seriously,” Pillsbury, referring to the Chinese, said in an interview this week. 

“To them, it’s a violation of the new model of great power relations, it’s a violation of the new era and it’s a violation of ‘Xi Jinping Thought,’ if you will.”

Tall, bald and broad-shouldered, Pillsbury has served the United States government in varying levels of prominence as a Chinese and national security expert in administrations dating to Richard Nixon’s. 

Fluent in Mandarin with a doctorate in political science from Columbia University, Pillsbury, 73, gained notoriety among China specialists for his ability to gain access to Chinese intelligence and military officials and his knack for finding and translating archived documents that shed light on China’s thinking.
And, like some of those in the Trump administration, Pillsbury also once considered himself a “panda hugger” — someone who thought that China could become an economic and political ally whose growth should be supported.
But Pillsbury began to take a darker view of China — and its ambitions — later in his career, after interviews and discussions with top military and intelligence officials in Beijing. 

And he has found a soul mate in President Trump — whose relentless desire to upend America’s trade relationship with China and protect domestic power has produced a trade war that has no natural path to resolution.
Pillsbury was brought into President Trump’s orbit during the transition period in 2016, after the president-elect spoke by telephone with Taiwan’s president, breaking protocol and angering China.
He has worked closely with Matthew Pottinger, the senior director of Asian affairs on the National Security Council, and the White House considered offering him a formal role, according to a former official, but there were concerns about his ability to get a security clearance. 

Pillsbury said that it remained a possibility and that he would like to be the ambassador to China someday.
As President Trump increasingly blurs economic security and national security — viewing China’s economic rise as a national security threat to America — Pillsbury’s knowledge of China has become even more in demand.
President Trump’s economic team is deeply divided on how to approach China, with nationalists like Mr. Navarro and Mr. Robert E. Lighthizer, President Trump’s top trade negotiator, often clashing with Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, who have offered pro-China approaches.
Pillsbury, whose realist view of China has found resonance, tries to explain to White House officials that China’s leadership has its own internal divisions and advises President Trump on how to leverage those splits to gain an advantage, he said.
When Mr. Navarro, with whom he plays tennis and who featured him in his movie “Crouching Tiger,” asked him how to rankle the Chinese earlier this year, Pillsbury begrudgingly told him that using the term “economic aggression” would grab their attention because the word “aggression” has a more sinister meaning in Mandarin.
In June the phrase was emblazoned in the title of a White House report on China’s intellectual property practices.
In practice, Pillsbury offers more nuanced prescriptions for responding to China’s march to global dominance. 

Others in the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, have openly clashed with the Chinese.
“To try to get them to sign a piece of paper saying they’ve done all these bad things is futile,” Mr. Pillsbury said. 

“It gets back to the goal of the president. If the goal is to humiliate the Chinese and tell the base we’re stopping this raping of our country, this approach won’t work.”

Pillsbury’s more doveish tone is part of an effort to stay in the good graces of the Chinese. 

He has traveled to China four times in the last 18 months and is planning to go again in December, when he will share insights about the United States with Chinese think tanks.
Consulting and writing have made for a lucrative career for Pillsbury, who is working on another book and has mused about a movie of his own. 

He lives in a $7.5 million Georgetown mansion with his wife, a British-born ballerina who was a member of the Royal Ballet Corps, and they own a well-curated collection of Asian art. 

For recreation, he flies a small Cessna, which he crashed last year during a landing in Maryland. 

He was unhurt.
These days, Pillsbury likes to boast — with a smile — that he has become a “humble, modest fellow.”

Make China Small Again

President Trump’s China Policy Is a Triumph.
The president's trade war is bringing Beijing to heel.
BY GREG AUTRY

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally on February 22, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive approach to China has been the most credible and consistent policy of an often-criticized White House.
The president’s assertions of Chinese malfeasance in trade matters are undeniably true.
Even CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, no fan of the president, has said, “Donald Trump is right: China is a trade cheat,” going on to praise the U.S. trade representative’s exhaustive report on China’s World Trade Organization noncompliance as a rare example of a quality document from this administration.
Despite dire warnings from establishment economists and media pundits that getting tough on China would damage the U.S. economy, we have seen nothing of the kind.
The United States is not simply surviving the trade war but has thrived through two years of global stagnation.
In the meantime, as best as can be told from highly unreliable and often-faked data, Chinese economic growth has stalled.
The hard-line U.S. policy has been effective and should be maintained until China demonstrates real, substantial behavioral change such as no longer requiring forced joint partnerships and ceasing its vast state-run cyberespionage program. 
Holding Beijing accountable for its treatment of its own citizens isn’t too much to ask either.
Then-President Bill Clinton’s fateful decision to disconnect U.S. human rights policy from trade deals in 1993 removed America’s most powerful instrument for producing good in the world. 
As George W. Bush and Barack Obama subsequently adopted Clinton’s “business is business” policy, the Chinese Communist Party learned to exploit a complacent Western media to whitewash its authoritarianism, militarism, and repression and greenwash its environmental depravation.
Lazy American journalists eagerly reprinted half-truths generated by D.C. think tanks funded by the multinational corporations growing rich on the China trade, as well as quotes from professors at universities addicted to foreign student tuition fees and wealthy Chinese donors. 
Those who criticized China, as I did, were marginalized, maligned, and censored. 
U.S. firms such as Google and Home Depot found their attempts to actually access the promised mega-market wrecked by a system tilted in favor of China’s domestic champions.
Still, the horrors of Tibet and Tiananmen were obscured by iPhones and corporate profits. 
Today, Americans enjoy movies from U.S. studios whose scripts are written to avoid offending the Communist Party and are blissfully unaware that over a million Chinese citizens are being brutalized in “re-education” camps designed to deprogram their religious identities.
President Trump holding China’s hypersensitive authoritarians accountable to international standards of decency in trade was a badly overdue act of bravery, and one that perhaps only an unabashedly indiscreet leader could pull off.
The very public shaming of Beijing over its blatantly closed markets, transshipment of products, export subsidies, abuse of joint partnerships, espionage, and technology theft has revealed the party’s claims as a sham. 
All of these facts are superbly documented in the aforementioned Office of the U.S. Trade Representative report and in the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing’s report on China’s economic aggression.
The emperor’s imaginary clothes vanished in a wink.
The promise implied by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and others that appeasing and enriching China’s brutal despots would align them with U.S. interests or liberalize them can no longer be defended with a straight face. 
Over the last two years, establishment pundits shifted from spouting nonsense about China’s inevitable progress toward capitalism and democracy to asking whether tariffs are the right way to confront a dangerous regime we all agree is built on lies and cheating.
The initial results are now in.
The current trade policy has demonstrated its effectiveness, and it is undermining the Communist Party’s only source of legitimacy: ill-gotten economic growth. 
And on the U.S. side, it’s going to be easier to maintain than most people think.
The U.S. market remains the most valuable economic prize on Earth, something this week’s annual Black Friday consumption-fest underscores.
It is, by far, the world’s largest economy, with a 2017 GDP of $19.4 trillion.
That’s at least 60 percent larger than China’s $12.2 trillion and probably a lot more, as China’s dubious GDP figures bend to fit official targets.
Since consumption forms a much larger part of American GDP, the U.S. market for goods is many times larger than China’s.
The United States is also the healthiest major economy, with robustly increasing GDP growth and the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 50 years.
China is not likely to catch up in our lifetimes.
Additionally, the United States has a much smaller population dividing those spoils—and being less burdened by taxes than their global counterparts, U.S. consumers can spend far more than the citizens of any large nation.
Most importantly, China is paying the lion’s share of America’s tariffs.
While advocates of "free" trade have worked hard to scare consumers with threats of huge price increases, these have not emerged.
This is because any additional cost incurred in the distribution of a product may be allocated to either the consumer, through higher prices, or to the producer, through lower margins.
The market determines this split as consumers demonstrate their tolerance for absorbing higher prices.
The elasticity of demand for products determines the price, and a recent European study by EconPol concludes, “A 25 percentage point increase in tariffs raises US consumer prices on all affected Chinese products by only 4.5% on average, while the producer price of Chinese firms declines by 20.5%.” 
And don’t forget that the entire 25 percent goes into the U.S. Treasury, feeding America’s economy, not China’s. 
If Chinese prices eventually do increase, the same system will force distributors and retailers to absorb the cost before consumers.
Their suppliers are already moving to non-China sources.
Significantly, none of this success is accidental.
Many of this administration’s political appointments have been criticized, and the president has removed several of them.
President Trump has even publicly expressed regret over his appointment of Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary.
In contrast, the team at the White House National Trade Council, the Department of Commerce, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative have been brilliantly strategic in the face of a relentless, China-backed media attack on the trade policy. 
The EconPol researchers recognized this when they wrote, “The US government has strategically levied import duties on goods with high import elasticities.”
Whether or not you agree with the tactics crafted by White House trade advisor Peter Navarro (with whom I wrote a book), Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, this operation has been professionally planned and executed.
Knowing that China would quickly move to disguise its products in transshipments, the Trump team expertly renegotiated complex deals with South Korea, Mexico, and Canada in record time. 
A critical and disorganized Europe has been left scrambling to reassess its China relations, lest its market become the dumping ground of last resort.
Investors buying in to the media prattle that U.S. trade policy has been ill-informed or that soybeans are somehow more important to the United States than technology do so at great peril.
In the face of this success, free trade backbiters are now calling for negotiations.
If you are under any delusion that this time, the Chinese government will take a trade agreement with the West seriously, I encourage you to read Articles 33 through 41 of the Chinese Constitution, which reads like the U.S. Bill of Rights.
This document specifically protects human rights, freedom of religious beliefs, freedom from illegal arrest, freedom from unreasonable search, freedom of speech, and the right to vote and protest. 
None of these things actually exist. 
Like the regime’s official name, the “People’s Republic,” rule of law in China has always been a lie the West agreed to accept. 
The Chinese Communist Party does not respect the rule of law—it respects strength and power.
The U.S. president and his team should stay the course, both for America’s sake and for China’s. Reducing the economic influence of an aggressive authoritarian regime is the right thing to do for the world and, eventually, for the Chinese people. 
They shouldn’t bother with an agreement designed only to delay the other side and that will never be honored.
The new Democratic majority in the lower house of the U.S. Congress and establishment Republicans who otherwise oppose the president should re-evaluate the current trade policy in light of the positive empirical results and eschew the illusory arguments of those who benefit from enriching a dangerous and tyrannical regime.

Wall Street Quislings

White House adviser Navarro warns Wall Street 'globalists' over China

By Katie Lobosco and Donna Borak

University of California at Irvine Economics Professor Peter Navarro arrives in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2017.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro took a shot at Wall Street Friday, warning "globalist elites" against meddling with the Trump administration's policy on China.
Bankers are putting a "full court press" on the White House to make a deal that would end the escalating trade war between the two nations, Navarro said during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.
"If and when there is a deal, it will be on President Donald J. Trump's terms -- not Wall Street terms," he said.
"If Wall Street is involved and continues to insinuate itself into these negotiations, there will be a stench around any deal that's consummated because it will have the imprimatur of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street," Navarro added.
Navarro, a former economics professor, accused billionaires and hedge fund managers of engaging in "shuttle diplomacy" between the United States and China, which he says weakens the President and his negotiating position.

His remarks come ahead of President Trump's expected meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping at the G20 summit later this month in Argentina. 

The administration has sent mixed messages about whether the two are nearing a truce that would lift more than $250 billion in retaliatory tariffs on an array of goods ranging from chemical products and motors to luggage and hats.
The comments reflect the ongoing divisions inside the Trump administration between 'globalists' -- including those with Wall Street backgrounds like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Larry Kudlow -- and the patriots, who hew to the "America First" stance laid out during the campaign and early months of Trump's presidency by former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
"Wall Street is a very easy boogeyman to attack in situations like these," said Rufus Yerxa, a former US trade official who now leads the National Foreign Trade Council, in an interview with CNN. 

"But look, the concern about making sure that the US gets the right results in China without provoking a trade war comes from Main Street, and from the American companies that make things, produce jobs and export stuff."

Yerxa said his members, which include companies like Google, Walmart, Visa, General Electric and Caterpillar, have been offering input to the Trump administration wherever possible, but notes there's still "a bit of confusion" over which direction the White House may be going given ongoing internal discussions.
"We don't have any clear sense of where they are," said Yerxa, referring to any developing proposals. "A lot of the business community isn't being brought into details of that."
President Trump earlier this week promised a positive meeting with Xi.
"We'll have a good meeting and we're going to see what we can do," the President said at his Wednesday news conference following the midterm elections.
But fault lines between the US and China were on clear display Friday during a meeting between senior military officials, who challenged each other over the South China Sea, Taiwan, religious freedom and trade.
President Trump has made it a priority to take an aggressive stance against China for its unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers. 

He's threatened to escalate the trade war further by taxing the remaining Chinese goods sold to the United States.
Many American manufacturers, farmers and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle say they appreciate the administration's efforts to change China's trade policies. 

But some argue the tariffs aren't the best way to address the issues. 

They pose a dilemma to US importers who must decide whether to absorb the higher cost of the goods or pass it on to consumers, and some exporters are hurting from China's retaliatory tariffs.

In his remarks Friday, Navarro also blamed Wall Street for the decline in manufacturing and the opioid crisis.
"If they want to do good, then spend their billions in Dayton, Ohio, in the factory towns of America where we need a rebirth of our manufacturing base and end to the opioid crisis -- which they helped create by off-shoring our production," he said.

We are at war against the Chinese, and it's not just over trade

• CNBC's Jim Cramer does not expect a trade deal between the U.S. and China any time soon.
• President Trump and Chinese dictator Xi plan to meet around the G-20 summit later this month.

By Matthew J. Belvedere

President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference with Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 9, 2017.

CNBC's Jim Cramer said on Monday he does not expect a trade deal between the United States and China any time soon.
"I think we are at war against the Chinese, and it's not over. And the war is not just trade," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street," taking cues from the speech that White House trade advisor Peter Navarro delivered last week.
Dr. Navarro said Friday any agreement between Washington and Beijing to end their trade dispute, which resulted in back-and-forth tariffs, will be on "President Donald J. Trump's terms, not Wall Street terms."
Cramer said the tone of Navarro's speech on economics reminded him of the kind of rhetoric that then-President Ronald Reagan used decades ago during the Cold War with Russia over nuclear arms.
"That's a speech that Reagan gave against the Soviet Union. And that didn't end well for the Soviet Union," said Cramer, the host of "Mad Money." 

"The G-20 is going to be so important."
Cramer was referencing the summit of the Group of 20 leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the end of the month when President Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping plan to meet.
In September, the White House imposed its latest round of tariffs, totaling $200 billion of Chinese products. 

In response, China levied tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods.
President Trump has also threatened additional tariffs of $267 billion, which would basically cover the rest of all Chinese imports into the U.S.

Lost Illusions

Europe Once Saw Xi Jinping as a Hedge Against Trump. Not Anymore.
By STEVEN ERLANGER

The announcement that Xi Jinping could possibly become China’s ruler for life has punctured his promise to be “a reliable stakeholder” in the global order. 

BRUSSELS — A year ago, the self-styled global elite gathered at Davos, shaken by the election of Donald J. Trump, who made no secret of his contempt for the multilateral alliances and trade that underpin the European Union.
Then up stepped Xi Jinping, promising that if America would no longer champion the global system, China would.
European officials and business leaders were thrilled.
But a year later, European leaders are confronted with the reality that Xi is also a threat to the global system, rather than a great defender. 

The abolition of the two-term limit for the presidency, which could make Xi China’s ruler for life and which is expected to be ratified this week by China’s legislature, has punctured the hope that China would become “a responsible stakeholder” in the global order. 

Few still believe China is moving toward the Western values of democracy and rule of law.
Instead, European leaders now accuse China of trying to divide the European Union as it woos Central Europe and the Balkan states with large investments. 

They are also wary of how China has become more aggressive militarily, in espionage and in its investment strategy abroad — with targets including its largest trading partner in Europe, Germany.
For decades the European Union has benefited from the global system created by the United States after World War II, as has China. 

Even as Russia under Vladimir V. Putin has remained a revanchist power, trying to destabilize the bloc and win back territories lost in the Cold War, China’s economic success has depended on stability and order — which benefited Europe, too.
But the prospect of Xi as ruler in perpetuity has scrambled the equation. 

Many European leaders distrust Mr. Trump, who says he sees them less as allies than as competitors. 

But if moving closer to China once seemed like a smart hedge, at least while Mr. Trump was in office, now Xi also presents a problem — and he may not be going away.

China invested heavily in the port of Piraeus, in Greece, transforming it into the busiest harbor in the Mediterranean. 

“We’re at an inflection point,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. 

“The Western world now understands that we have to take China’s push out into the world much more seriously than we have in the past.”
Mr. Trump’s declaration that he will impose swinging tariffs on imported steel will hurt Europe more than China, another example of how Europe is getting caught between Washington and Beijing.
European political leaders were already growing wary of Chinese intentions, especially given the vacuum of foreign policy leadership from the Trump administration and the persistent meddling from Russia. 

Last month, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel of Germany warned that China was pursuing its own model of world order and attempting “to put a Chinese stamp on the world and impose a Chinese system, a real global system but not like ours, based on human rights and individual liberties.”
Mr. Gabriel was especially concerned about China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a huge infrastructure project promoted by Xi to expand Chinese power by developing new trade routes, including in Europe. 

To expedite this, Beijing has created the “16 plus 1” group, which brings China together with 16 European nations, 11 of them members of the European Union and the rest from the western Balkans.
“If we don’t succeed in developing a single strategy toward China,” said Mr. Gabriel in an earlier speech, “then China will succeed in dividing Europe.”
At the time, some regarded his remarks as alarmist. 

Less so now. 

Despite Germany’s huge exports to China and investment there — China is Germany’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade last year of $230 billion — even the German ambassador in Beijing, Michael Clauss, has openly criticized China’s policies and domestic repression, a marked change from years of German silence.

A Chinese car company’s recent purchase of nearly 10 percent of Daimler, the iconic German car manufacturer that owns the Mercedes-Benz brand, has alarmed German officials. 

Chinese companies have also made waves by buying a major German machine-tool and robotics company, Kuka, and then trying to buy a key semiconductor company, Aixtron. 

The latter bid was blocked by American objections on security grounds. 

The sudden purchase last week of nearly 10 percent of Daimler, the iconic German car manufacturer, by a much smaller Chinese car company, Geely, has also raised hackles, and questions about where the money, some $9 billion, really comes from.
“It’s a highly public discussion about Chinese influence in Germany,” said Angela Stanzel, an Asia expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

“There have been 10 times as many articles about Daimler than about Xi prolonging his rule.”
Berlin and Brussels have been shaken amid concerns that the real intent of Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” program is as much political as economic.
“The main worry was China’s divide-and-rule policy,” Ms. Stanzel said. 

“The new worry is that because China is trying to make this format work, it will invest less effort and money into its relationship with Brussels.”
Both Germany and France have been pushing the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, to draw up stricter investment screening regulations to better protect European companies and European security. 

Europe will have to find a new China strategy, Ms. Stanzel added, one free of any illusions, “because now we’re sure we’ll have Xi for the rest of his life.”
Minxin Pei, a China scholar at Claremont McKenna College, said China’s actions in Europe, much like in the South China Sea, “have a probing quality, to test where the weaknesses are and where the pushback is.”

Trade is only part of the overall security and geopolitical picture, he said, noting that Xi may be pushing too hard, too fast and that “this grandiose vision and ruthless actions are a bit premature.”
Politically, the European Union has been troubled by convulsions in recent years as far-right parties have challenged the political establishment, while leaders in Poland and Hungary are challenging democratic norms. 

No European leader confused China with being an emerging democracy, yet analysts say many Western officials hoped and assumed the Chinese system would gradually become more like the democratic West.
“I don’t know who is still fooling themselves about convergence and liberalization — Xi put an end to that long ago,” François Godement, a China scholar at Sciences Po in Paris. 

“Official China has been increasingly frank about a systematic competition with democracies.”
By now, European leaders are accustomed to dealing with Putin and Russia. 

Xi is very different, says Susan Shirk, an expert on Chinese politics who served in the Clinton administration.
“While Putin wants to be a spoiler, Xi wants to be respected as a global leader,” said Ms. Shirk, who is now director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. 

“He hasn’t tried to subvert the structures that exist. But he has recently started to build his own.”
With China returning to a more Leninist system, “we still don’t know what that will mean for global governance,” she said, “especially with Trump abdicating and trashing it.” 

For Europe, the prospect of China as a strategic competitor, as well as a political competitor, is a major challenge. 

“Europe is so disaggregated and so lacking in fortitude that its countries don’t think like big leaders,” said Mr. Schell. 

“America always has, but with Trump we’ve gone missing, and nature abhors a vacuum.”

“Xi’s open-ended tenure is rooted in Leninism, autocracy and control, which will make it a tremendous challenge for liberal democracies rooted in a different value system, especially in a world reeling with no leadership.”

Rogue Nation

President Trump Criticizes China as Meeting on North Korea Nears
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

President Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, leaving the White House on Wednesday for a trip to Poland and Germany. 

WARSAW — President Trump criticized China on Wednesday for failing to do more to pressure North Korea on its nuclear program, suggesting as he prepares for a high-stakes meeting with Xi Jinping this week that he is re-evaluating the United States trade relationship with Beijing in light of the growing provocations from Pyongyang.
Mr. Trump vented his displeasure with China in a pair of early-morning tweets as he was departing on a trip to Warsaw, and to Hamburg, Germany, for the Group of 20 gathering of major world economies, where discussions about how to deal with the North Korean threat will be high on the agenda. 

He plans to hold meetings on the sidelines with Xi, as well as with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea.
“Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter,” Mr. Trump said in one of the tweets on Wednesday. 

“So much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!”
A few minutes earlier, he suggested that American trade agreements should be contingent on such cooperation.

“The United States made some of the worst Trade Deals in world history,” he wrote. 

“Why should we continue these deals with countries that do not help us?”

It was not clear where Mr. Trump garnered his 40 percent figure for growth in overall trade between China and North Korea. 

A South Korean group, the Korea International Trade Association, said on Monday that North Korea had exported as much iron to China in the first five months of 2017 as it did in all of 2016.
But the group also said that North Korea’s exports of coal to China remained frozen. 

Coal is the North’s most valuable commodity, and China cut off its coal imports this year. 

China’s trade with the North grew 37.4 percent during the first three months of the year, compared with the same period in 2016, Chinese trade data released in April showed. 

China said the trade grew even as it stopped buying North Korean coal.
The meeting with Xi, with whom Mr. Trump developed a rapport during a getaway at his Mar-a-Lago estate in April, took on graver significance after North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile this week that the South’s defense minister said was capable of reaching Hawaii. 

Mr. Trump has said that he would never allow the North to develop such a capability, but his options for dealing with the threat are limited.
“We’re going to do very well,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he responded to shouted questions about his plans to address North Korea’s escalation as he left the White House on Wednesday to begin the trip.
Yet his comments on social media suggested that Mr. Trump is struggling to find a way to pressure China to use its influence on the North to de-escalate tensions. 

After the missile launch, Mr. Trump used Twitter to try to goad China into a strong response, suggesting that it “put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!”
He also said it was difficult to believe that Japan and South Korea would “put up with this much longer.”

With 'F**k China Month,' Trump Transformed America’s Foreign Policy in Just Four Days

The new American president ended decades of Washington’s sucking up to China and in the process saved America’s 63-year-old alliance with South Korea and boxed in North Korea.

By GORDON G. CHANG

HONG KONG —“I am,” said Moon Jae-in on Thursday, “in complete sympathy with President Trump’s diplomacy of strong power.”
Strong power indeed. 

So strong that Moon, the newly elected South Korean president who disagrees with Trump on most everything, unexpectedly fell into line with the American leader.
The Thursday and Friday meetings between Trump and Moon cap one of the most consequential—and successful—weeks for U.S. foreign policy in recent memory. 

All it took was four days for Trump to discard two—and maybe four—decades of Washington’s settled China policy. 

By doing so, it looks like he saved his country’s six-decade-old alliance with South Korea, which was in danger of coming under China’s—and North Korea’s—sway.
And by preserving unity with Seoul, Trump, at least for the moment, narrowed the options of North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un, limiting the possibility of his nuclear adventurism.
The momentous week began with the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House, marked by three bear hugs between the pair and the warmest of welcomes. 

Washington observers had been concerned that current trade and immigration irritants would derail the approach set by the Bush and Obama administrations to fortify links between the world’s most populous democracy and its most powerful one, but Trump kept ties on track. 

“The relationship between India and the United States has never been stronger, has never been better,” the American leader said, accurately characterizing matters.
The word “China” did not pass the lips of either the American president or the Indian prime minister in their post-meeting remarks Monday, but it was clear both saw in the other the means to contain an increasingly aggressive Chinese state.
Doubts about the significance of Monday’s meeting were dispelled the following three days. 

Tuesday, the State Department dropped China to the worst ranking—Tier 3—in its annual Trafficking in Persons report after not giving the country another waiver. 

Among other things, State cited China’s use of forced labor from North Korea.
And then came two blasts Thursday. 

First, the Treasury Department designated Bank of Dandong, a Chinese bank, a “primary money laundering concern” pursuant to the Patriot Act. 

The U.S. charged that the bank has been handling, in violation of American law, money for North Korea’s ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs.
This was not the first time Treasury severed a Chinese financial institution from the global financial system—it cut off Bank of Kunlun in July 2012 for evading Iran-related rules—but it was, as sanctions expert Joshua Stanton told The Daily Beast, “an important first step, one that will send a clear message to the Chinese banks that have long laundered North Korea’s money and aided its proliferation.”
Moreover, Treasury on Thursday sanctioned a Chinese company, Dalian Global Unity Shipping Co., and two Chinese individuals, freezing their assets and prohibiting U.S. persons from dealing with them.
Second, the Trump administration on Thursday notified Congress of a proposed $1.42 billion sale of arms to Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing’s claims as its 34th province. 

The White House, not wanting to upset Chinese officials, had sat on the package, which the Obama administration had prepared in its final months.
Beijing was “outraged” over the arms sale and angered over the Patriot Act designation, but the administration, according to various reports, did not care. 

As one observer told the Washington insider Nelson Report at the end of last week, “word on the street” is that the White House “has called this ‘F--- China Month.’ ”
The new attitude toward China is bound to last more than a month as the president has, in the course of four days, clearly thrown out two decades of American policy that had placed a higher priority on integrating China into the international system than disarming North Korea. 

Moreover, it looks like he has also started a dynamic that will lead to the reversal of four decades of attempts to place the promotion of friendly relations with Beijing over the stout defense of immediate American interests.
Yet whether Trump abandoned four or just two decades of China policy last week, he most certainly rescued the 63-year-old mutual defense treaty with the Republic of Korea. 

There was great concern that President Moon, a leftist, was going to walk away from the U.S. during his meetings with Trump.
The South Korean had spent the first days of his presidency trying to reorient Seoul away from Washington and toward the other Korea. 

Moreover, Moon and his aides have been saying things inconsistent with the maintenance of the alliance, and many in the Seoul and Washington policy circles were concerned he was heading to the American capital to have it out with Trump.
After all, his policy toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was inconsistent with that of the American administration. 

While Trump is seeking to deny the Kim regime of the resources to build nukes and missiles, Moon wants to win Pyongyang’s trust by providing essentially unconditional aid and assistance and resuming investment.
Moon did not have a road-to-Damascus conversion while in Washington last week—his “progressive” views on North Korea have been baked-in for decades—but he appears to have been impressed by Trump’s determination, hence his surprising comment on the American “diplomacy of strong power” and his unexpected criticism of prior U.S. presidents for not acting resolutely.
No recent U.S. president has appeared willing to oppose the Chinese, so leaders in Asia have generally decided to “bandwagon” with Beijing. 

Trump showed last week he was not particularly fearful of crossing China.
So it looks like Trump’s moves against China last week, immediately preceding Moon’s two days of meetings with the American leader, convinced the South Korean that it was not in his interest to stand in opposition to the current occupant of the White House. 

In short, Trump, by acting decisively against Beijing, boxed in Moon.
The preservation of U.S.-South Korean unity should have two good effects. 

First, it should take some of the heat off Seoul, which has been the subject of unrelenting pressure from Beijing. 

Chinese leaders for months have been upset that Moon’s predecessor, Park Geun-hye, agreed to the deployment of Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on South Korean soil.
Chinese leaders, as a result, imposed unofficial sanctions on the South’s economy to get rid of THAAD, as the missile-defense system is called, and Beijing in recent weeks evidently thought that a rift between Moon and Trump presented a new opportunity to bully the South Korean political establishment.
Second, Kim Jong Un this week surely sees less of an opening to exploit differences between the two historic allies. 

And this means, as a practical matter, that he will be far more cautious with moves to destabilize his neighbor to the south and the broader region. 

The Kim family has always tried to drive wedges between Seoul and Washington, and Pyongyang has been restrained when it has viewed the alliance as strong.
For now, the alliance does look strong, and that is no small achievement for President Donald John Trump.
The impulsive Trump is fully capable of undoing his great week in Korean diplomacy, but if he stays the course he will reorient American foreign policy in ways history will remember—and perhaps he will create lasting peace on the long-troubled peninsula.

The Manchurian President

Is Trump On China's Payroll? If So, Impeach Him
By Anders Corr

Wednesday brought a wave of news about Trump’s increasingly cozy relationship with China, including on his indirect financial connections. 

The press digested, uncomfortably, Trump’s claim that “Korea actually used to be a part of China.” 

He repeated that Chinese propaganda to the press after he got it direct from Xi Jinping. 

Also Wednesday, reports revealed that Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire gambling boss with casinos in Macao, China, gave $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. 

This is the largest single gift ever given for a U.S. president’s inauguration. 

Journalist Matt Isaacs has asked, “Is dirty money spent by corrupt Chinese officials at Macau casinos flowing into our elections, at least indirectly? ” 

The mix of Chinese money and Trump’s softening on China is worrisome, and if a causal relationship can be proved, Trump should be impeached. 

He isn’t good for the Republican Party, and the Democrats will oblige.
Frames of Xi Jinping, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are display in a photo shop in Beijing on April 17, 2017. 

Trump’s administration is softening on China’s ally North Korea, and according to experts, might accept a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, rather than an outright ban. 

That would be no real change, as North Korea’s decades-long pattern of playing the U.S. is oscillation between promises of a freeze, and breaking those promises. 

Trump’s phantom aircraft carrier strike group supposedly steaming toward North Korea didn’t help. 

Since Mar-a-Lago, Trump has had mostly good things to say about China. 

He seems to have forgotten that China is sacking U.S. technology to build its military, and the military of North Korea that now threatens us.
Trump’s offer to give China a good economic deal if China helps with North Korea is a chump deal, and we are the chumps. 

It will not be popular with Republican voters. 

It rewards China for the threat China created. 

Rather, Republicans should hold China responsible for anything North Korea does, including nuclear strikes. 

Trump should demand of China that it start acting responsibly and uphold the international laws to which it, and its allies, are already bound. 

Trump should call China’s bluff. 

No more Mr. Nice Guy. 

Obama tried that, and it failed.
But Trump has become the quintessential Mr. Nice to China. 

He doesn’t seem to notice that countries like the Philippines and Vietnam, since Trump’s election, are getting increasingly authoritarian. 

That President Duterte of the Philippines, whose drug war has been responsible for up to 6,000 extrajudicial killings, likens himself to President Trump, should be a warning signal. 

An impeachment complaint has been filed against Duterte, who is under China’s influence. 

Trump’s fate could be the same.

Trump was sitting pretty at Mar-a-Lago with Xi earlier this month. 

Like Duterte, Trump did not appear to care much about China’s human rights abuse or lack of democracy. 

“Donald Trump’s first meeting with Xi Jinping was all about business,” declared the Economist.
Let’s face it. 

Trump is soft on China. 

Trump denied it on April 18, four days after press reports that he was getting chummy with pro-China business interests, including Boeing. 

But 55 percent of voters in a February poll doubted his honesty. 

The Trump family business connections to China exploded shortly after his election. 

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, almost sealed a $400 million deal with a Chinese company for investment into a New York property. 

This was mixed with Kushner’s back-channel political deals with China’s Ambassador to the U.S.

After the election, Trump met with Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Henry Kissinger, who has taken a consistently pro-China stand and has served as a liaison between China and international business interests. 

All that business talk seems to have had an effect. 

Trump flip-flopped on calling China a currency manipulator, and on the One-China policy. 

Rex Tillerson’s proposed blockade of China’s militarized South China Sea artificial islands was toned down and now seems forgotten.
To ice the cake, on Wednesday China’s Foreign Ministry jumped to defend China’s speedy granting of trademarks to Ivanka Trump. 

She got them on the day she sat at dinner with Xi. 

Donald Trump, too, got his brands trademarked in China shortly after the election. 

That’s all worth money, and it raises a question. 

Is China trying to put Trump on its payroll, even indirectly? 

If China succeeds, the American people are getting reamed and should fight back hard. 

This includes impeachment.
Sadly, the swamp has come to Washington like never before, and Trump appears to be the blond creature most at home in its increasingly surreal waters. 

It is not a run-of-the-mill, money-green swamp. 

It could be a red tide. 

We need a Constitutional Amendment and a new set of tough laws that will keep money and foreigners out of U.S. politics, before foreigners start running the show. 

This especially applies to Russia and China.
Vice President Mike Pence is a clean Republican who would make a great President, and could get elected for two more terms. 

He could pardon Trump, who would return to cable with better ratings, and more Twitter followers, than ever. 

Except for Xi, that’s a win-win outcome for all.