A top Republican lawmaker said that China is looking for new ways to hurt the U.S. and its allies as part of the trade war.
“China is desperately seeking ways to try to inflict pain on the U.S. and U.S. allies, which would, as they hope, sort of result in a reverberating impact on U.S. economic interests,” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., told the Washington Examiner.
Those comments, from the chairman of the foreign relations subcommittee that oversees U.S. diplomacy in East Asia and the Pacific, came on the heels of Beijing announcing that the regime is assembling an “unreliable entities” list of U.S. businesses for potential punishment. That list is being developed in the wake of President Trump’s recent moves to ban Huawei, a major Chinese telecommunications company, from U.S. markets.
“They fail to understand is this is not just a knee-jerk, anti-China position the U.S. has on Huawei,” Gardner said. “This is a concern that we have relating to an equipment manufacturer that poses significant security risks to the United States and to our allies.”
U.S. officials distinguish between the controversy over Huawei, which is regarded as a platform for Chinese spy agencies, and the economic disputes that have driven the dueling rounds of tariffs on goods manufactured in each country. China has fewer options for tariffs than the United States, however, which is driving the communist power to look for unconventional ways to retaliate.
“Because of the U.S. pressure, continually increasing trade frictions … the responsibility lies completely with the U.S. side,” Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said Thursday.
