House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said President Donald Trump had to challenge China’s trade practices, tech and intellectual property theft — but she thinks he shouldn’t have done it alone.
“I think the president had to do something about it, I’m just not sure he went the right way,” Pelosi, D-Calif., told Jim Cramer in an interview Tuesday on CNBC’s “Mad Money” program. “I think we should have done it multilaterally, with the EU and the rest (of our allies).”
Trump has slapped tariffs or will levy tariffs on more than $500 billion worth of Chinese imports by mid-December after most of the holiday shopping is over. Trump’s moves of course have led to retaliatory tariffs from China as the world’s two largest economies have remained locked in a virtual stalemate thus far, dragging down global growth and stoking fears of a recession at home and abroad.
In addition to retaliatory tariffs, China has targeted U.S. agriculture, hurting the farmers who make up a big portion of Trump’s voting base in rural America, and Pelosi took aim at the president for what Beijing has done to the farming community.
“And what I would say is, whatever path he wanted to take to improve a trade relationship, do not empower the other side to hurt your farmers and your consumers,” Pelosi said.
However, the two sides have called a bit of a ceasefire and will hold talks beginning this week in Washington to try and iron out a new trade deal. Getting a trade deal done would likely be a big boost for Trump’s 2020 election chances and he said Tuesday he thinks “there will be a deal soon, maybe before the election or one day after the election.
Trump also threw another warning shot at China, saying if a deal is done after the election “it will be the toughest deal anybody’s ever had to make from the standpoint of China, and they know that.”
In the meantime, Pelosi said Tuesday that House Democrats are moving closer to finalizing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a replacement for the North American Trade Agreement.
“The idea that we would give a victory to the president is irrelevant,” Pelosi said regarding whether or not the deal passing would be a feather in Trump‘s cap heading into election season. “It’s a victory for the American people.”
