Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday that President Trump’s claim that China is interfering with with U.S. elections is based on China’s push to impose tariffs on products that target regions of the U.S. where the president’s base of support lies.
“They have targeted areas … where the president is sensitive. That was what the president was referring to,” Mnuchin said at a forum hosted by the Hill Thursday. The secretary was responding to questions about comments Trump made Wednesday at the United Nations.
“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election coming up in November. Against my administration. They do not want me, or us, to win because I am the first President ever to challenge China on trade,” Trump said Wednesday. The comments initially appeared to allege that China had been involved in activities similar to Russia’s efforts to covertly influence the 2016 election.
But Mnuchin said Trump’s comments referred only to things like China placing retaliatory tariffs on specific products like bourbon, which is produced in states like Kentucky that leaned heavily toward Trump in the 2016 election. China was deliberately trying to use the tariffs to make people in those states hurt economically and drive a wedge between them and the president, he said.
The treasury secretary also said there were no trade talks currently planned between the U.S. and China. There had been plans for what would have been a fifth round of talks between the two nations, but those have fallen by the wayside.
Mnuchin nevertheless disputed that the U.S. was involved in a trade war with Beijing. “No. We are in a trade dispute with China. This is not new,” he said.
That dispute has resulted in the U.S. hitting $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, and those tariffs are set to hit 25 percent across the board next year. Trump has threatened to place tariffs on another $267 billion worth of goods, which would cover all imports from China. The U.S. has also placed 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent ones on aluminum, policies mainly directed at China. Beijing has placed tariffs on $120 billion worth of U.S. goods in response.
