Donal Trump, billionaire businessman and Republican presidential candidate, has once again taken his notorious bad-mouthing to a whole new level – this time, accusing China of “raping” the United States in regards to the mega-nation’s trade policy.
At a campaign rally in Indiana on Sunday, Trump announced, ”We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what we’re doing.”
He continued on his frenzied rant, telling his audience that China was responsible for “the greatest theft in the history of the world.”
“We’re going to turn it around, and we have the cards, don’t forget it. We have a lot of power with China,” he added.
Trump has long criticized China’s trade policy, claiming that China manipulates its currency in order to make its exports more competitive globally. And that, says Trump, has seriously harmed both businesses and workers in the U.S.
The Chinese government ensures that its currency, the yuan, maintains a closely fixed relationship with the U.S. dollar and only trades in a narrow band either side of a fixed point selected by China, instead of allowing it to float freely against the U.S. dollar.
The CCP’s trade tactics enrage many in America, including Trump, who claim that China is purposefully keeping its currency at an unnatural low so that it can increase its exports to the U.S., which also damages the prospects of US firms selling their goods to China, BBC News reports.
According to the latest figures by the U.S. government, the trade deficit with China reached an all-time high of $365.7 billion last year. Furthermore, by February 2016, it had already reached an astounding $57 billion.
Still more data from Washington for U.S.-China goods trade for the months of January and February show that China’s actions in regards to their currency have indeed created a trade imbalance. The numbers from those months show that the U.S. exported $16.3 billion in goods to China, but only imported $73.3 billion, resulting in a huge disparity – a whopping 57 billion dollars.
Due to these figures, the U.S. Treasury included China in its currency watch-list last week. This took place after pressure was placed on the U.S. government to be more vigorous in its efforts to combat any currency manipulation by trading partners.
BBC reports, “The Treasury stated that none of its large trading partners had engaged in currency manipulation in the past year, but indicated it was concerned about growing imbalances with some of those partners, including China.”
Donald Trump, in his campaign manifesto (of course he wrote one), vows to “cut a better deal with China that helps American businesses and workers compete.” He also lays out four goals in the document, which include immediately declaring China a “currency manipulator” and putting “an end to China’s illegal export subsidies and lax labor and environmental standards”.
This is sadly not the first time Donald Trump has used the word “rape” in his presidential campaign, which is frighteningly marked with defamation and racism. Earlier in his campaign, Trump referred to Mexicans as “rapists” and criminals responsible for bringing illegal drugs into the US.
There was no immediate response from Beijing to Trump’s inflammatory remarks.
