President Donald Trump posted a short video on his Twitter account Wednesday, taking a swing at China’s trade tactics and giving a few examples of how the U.S. has been getting the short end of the stick regarding trade deals around the globe.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2018
“For many years countries have been taking total advantage of the United States on trade. Whether they’re allies or not, they’ve looked at us as a bunch of very soft touches, and that’s not what’s happening anymore. We’ve made a deal with Mexico, which is a fair deal — not the deal that we lived with where we were losing hundreds of billions of dollars a year.”
The topic then switched to “the big one,” China, which Trump says we’re losing $375 billion a year to in trade deficits.
“We’re working on other trade deals but the big one is China. Because for a long period of time, China has taken advantage of our country. And I don’t blame China. I blame the people that represented our nation, to have allowed that to happen; where $375 billion dollars in trade deficits came about, year after year. We don’t want that; not fair, not right. So we’ve placed massive tariffs on China. And the tariffs have really had a positive impact.”
Trump went on to say the tariffs are working because the U.S. is taking in a lot of money while also creating jobs “like never before.”
“So it’s very important that China open it’s markets to our farmers and everybody else because right now they’re closed, largely. And yet our markets are open to them.
But let me give you an example that you’ve heard: China produces a car and they sell it into the United States, and they have a very small two-and-a-half percent tax, which to a larger extent they don’t even pay. On the other hand, we make a car and sell it into China, and they charge 25 percent.
So it’s 25 percent vs. two-and-a-half percent, and that’s the way the deal is — no good, no good for us. So we’re changing things and we’re changing them fast.”