Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Intellectual dishonesty. Collapsing ethics. A truth vacuum.

Cobble these dysfunctions together, and an accurate description of the leftist media’s lies and fakery comes into focus any time they report on Donald Trump’s trade negotiations with China.

Since the 1990s, China has prospered while America’s politicians and other trading partners chose the coward’s path, buckling under and being polite instead of fighting to level the playing field. This policy disgrace peaked in the Obama administration, leaving us with a huge $825 billion U.S. trade deficit. Obama’s weakness and appeasement created a powerful economic rival of China, flush with military might, permitting China to make territorial claims throughout Asia that threatened Asian peace. Obama fell silent when China broke the rules of the WTO.  Then Obama sat on his hands when China hacked into the federal government’s Office of Management and Budget and stole 23 million federal records.

China the bully grew cocky and arrogant over the years as they built up a prosperous trade surplus and an imposing military, and illegally stole advanced and secret technology from U.S. companies, routinely violating trademark and copyright laws. Their economic policies undermined the American economy and stole jobs from U.S. workers. The Chinese flooded America with Fentanyl, with 72,000 people dying in 2017 alone. Chinese diplomats became accustomed to winning under any test of wills.

Then along came Trump. He vowed to rebuild the American manufacturing sector and bring jobs back to the U.S.  He moved to halt our unsustainable trade policies, where all of America’s trading partners were showing a trade surplus. Very quickly, China was no longer getting its way, even as Trump smiled and shook hands in his meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping. Trump smacked China in their economic and fiscal wallet by levying heavy tariffs on Chinese goods being exported to America— a stunning blow to the Chinese leadership, putting them on notice that Donald Trump did not fear the Chinese communist government and would accept the negative outcomes of a trade war to achieve parity. The tariffs imposed are like medicine—they don’t taste good but they are effective against nations bent on economic destruction of rivals.

This was the first president in modern times to grow a stiff spine to deal with China. This meant making it costly for Beijing whenever they behaved like a rogue state. And it has come to pass that U.S. companies by the thousands are relocating out of China, moving to other countries to lower or equal their expenses. China is learning that you don’t fool around with Donald Trump and his background as a rough-and-tumble negotiator from New York City.

Trump’s emergence also means that America will not stand aside and allow China’s Belt and Road Initiative to take hold as the “new theory of international relations”. This initiative is a “China-centered global trading network” that will extend the Chinese market worldwide. China’s intent here is to expand its “economic might into geopolitical power” that would challenge the global leadership of the U.S. If the Chinese communist government has its way, it will impose the Chinese concept of imperialism (known in China as tianxia); they want to replace the current international system that recognizes nations as sovereign, established under the Treaty of Westphalia. China and Mr. Xi would prefer “a unified world ruled by the Chinese”, stated a column in the Wall Street Journal.

You have read on these pages before that China, not Russia, is the most significant longer-term threat to the U.S.  Make no mistake that the U.S. and China are engaged in a cage fight for geopolitical dominance. China wants to position itself as the sole dominant superpower, the global hegemon. It seeks to replace America in that role. As such, China is the real long-term enemy of this country. Donald Trump may be “the only thing that stands between us and a world dominated by China”, as one maven wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

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John R. Smith

John R. Smith is chairman of BIZPAC, the Business Political Action Committee of Palm Beach County, and owner of a financial services company. He is a frequent columnist for BizPac Review.

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