New polling suggests President Trump can use China this year to generate the kind of populist energy that helped propel him to victory in 2020.
China has become a key battleground issue for the 2020 election as supporters of Trump hope a hardening in public opinion offers a populist route to victory that mirrors their 2016 playbook.
A poll published over the weekend shows the prize. FTI Consulting, a business advisory firm, found that 40% of U.S. adults say they won’t buy products from China. More than half don’t believe the country will follow through on its trade deal commitments. And more than three-quarters said they were willing to pay more for products if their manufacture were moved out of China.
For Trump supporters, that means something of a reprise of the playbook that proved successful in 2016, portraying their man as the outsider taking on vested interests.
Trump allies believe a president who made China a first-term priority will win that tussle rather than a challenger only now waking up to the danger. So while Joe Biden may claim that his deep experience culled from 25 hours of one-on-one talks with President Xi Jinping gives him unique insight in dealing with the communist regime, opponents say it shows he is one of the political insiders who sold out American workers.
Jason Miller, veteran of the 2016 Trump campaign, said: “Simply put, Joe Biden has a Hillary Clinton problem. He’s viewed as an entrenched insider. He’s had a hand in every bad trade deal that’s happened over the last quarter-century, if not half-century. Biden’s coziness with China will be problematic in 2020.”
The pro-Trump super PAC America First on Friday launched a $10 million advertising blitz in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, portraying Biden as weak on China. Meantime, the presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign is broadcasting its own ads claiming the president “rolled over for the Chinese,” complete with clips of Trump praising Beijing’s early response to the coronavirus pandemic.
When America First launched its new slate of ads, it said: “Biden spent more than 40 years in Washington, and all of them were good for China. As China stole American jobs and livelihoods, Biden sat passively by, promising us a rising China was a positive development.”
Meanwhile, Trump and his officials have been able to use their Rose Garden campaign to signal plans for tougher action.
The White House has ordered a federal retirement fund not to invest in Chinese companies, and it has prepared but not signed an executive order designed to bring medical supply chains out of the country. And last week, Trump was repeatedly pressed on whether he intended to withdraw from a trade deal signed in January.
“The ink wasn’t dry on a great trade deal, and all of a sudden, the plague comes in from China,” he said on the South Lawn. “We’re not happy about it.”
Tim Murtaugh, Trump campaign communications director, said the president had a record of standing up to China on international trade and acted fast to close travel when the danger from the coronavirus became clear.
“On the other hand, Joe Biden has a big problem with China. Our internal data shows that Joe Biden’s softness on China is a major vulnerability, among many,” he said. “He championed their entry into the World Trade Organization, comparing its economy to that of the Netherlands, and he has been clear that he still doesn’t view China as an economic competitor. Biden called the president’s lifesaving China travel restrictions ‘xenophobia’ and resisted holding China accountable for the virus outbreak.”
For its part, Biden’s campaign claimed Trump was too soft on China’s initial response to the coronavirus and too willing to accepts its version of events.
“When Trump rolled over for the Chinese, he took their word for it. Trump praised the Chinese 15 times in January and February as the coronavirus spread across the world,” says the narrator of a Biden campaign ad, before Biden describes how he would deal with the regime.
“I would be on the phone with China and making it clear: ‘We are going to need to be in your country. You have to be open. You have to be clear. We have to know what’s going on.’”
The danger for Biden is trying to out-tough Trump, a battle he cannot win, according to veteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. Instead, Biden just needs to make sure voters know that he understands the way they feel about China.
“Trump will try to make this the entire focus of the campaign. He’ll blame Biden for being part of the Obama administration,” he said. “All Biden has to do is prove they were tough enough and get it back to Trump not doing enough to contain the virus.”
