Former Trump Adviser Says New NAFTA Integral to China-US 'Economic War'
Steve Bannon, a populist strategist ousted from the White House last year, said there's no easy solution to the China-U.S. trade war, which he called "an economic war" during an interview at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit. Bannon, speaking Nov. 13, said working people's view that America is in decline -- and that elites are comfortable with that -- is one of the reasons Donald Trump was elected president. "There's a direct link between factories that went to China and the jobs that went with them, directly linked to opioid addiction" levels, Bannon said, citing the memoir Hillbilly Elegy. "This is about dignity and self-worth of our working class base."
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Bannon said that Trump had a strategic vision of NAFTA, that Mexico could start to take part of the supply chain back from East Asia. And, he said, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was wrong to say that China is not an existential threat to the United States. White House Economic Adviser Peter Navarro, a trade hawk, recently called out Wall Streeters such as Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, who made trips to China to try to calm the waters (see 1811090035). "We have got to start to unwind these SOEs," Bannon said, using shorthand for "state-owned enterprises," such as Huawei. When the interviewer argued that the Chinese economy is built on that, Bannon replied, "President Trump's not saying this is going to take an afternoon."