Joe Biden’s campaign is attempting to use President Trump’s conciliatory rhetoric toward Chinese President Xi Jinping, which has puzzled China hawks aligned with the president, to undermine his tough-guy image on Beijing while suggesting the former vice president is no pushover on the issue.
Trump’s campaign is seeking to portray the presumptive Democratic nominee as soft on China amid a global pandemic that originated in Wuhan. Republicans believe China is one of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities, based on polling data they have reviewed, and plan to make it a major issue this fall, according to multiple sources close to the Trump campaign.
The Biden campaign is sensing an opportunity to at least neutralize the China issue to maintain its current polling lead nationally and in the battleground states. A recent Harris poll found Democrats split 38%-38% on whether Trump was tough enough with China or should get tougher. Only 23% wanted the president to soften his stance.
On Monday, the Biden campaign circulated a Politico article from last week compiling 15 times Trump “praised China” during the coronavirus outbreak. In an accompanying statement, it accused Trump of “wasting precious months praising the Chinese government’s response to the virus instead of taking steps to prepare America.”
“In stark contrast, Vice President Biden and the intelligence community repeatedly warned Trump not to buy the Chinese government’s spin and to take steps to prepare America to combat the coronavirus,” the campaign statement continued. “Trump disregarded those warnings, and now the U.S. leads the world in both confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths.”
This follows videos released on Friday by Biden and his senior foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken that appear to be rebutting the “Beijing Biden” ad taken out by a pro-Trump super PAC. Trump “ignored the warnings of health experts and intelligence agencies and put his trust in China’s leaders instead. Now, we’re all paying the price,” Biden said. Blinken also held a call for reporters with Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a relative China hawk among Democrats.
A Biden-aligned super PAC, American Bridge, is running a $15 million ad campaign of its own hitting Trump on China. “Everyone knew they lied about the virus,” the narrator said against the backdrop of eerie music. “China … President Trump gave China his trust.” Last week, the Democratic National Committee’s sixth installment of its “In Focus: Trump’s Disastrous Coronavirus Response” was titled “Trump rolled over for China.” The DNC memo asserted, “Trump’s failure to stand up to China is one of his biggest vulnerabilities.”
The Trump-approved America First Action super PAC is already running an ad going after four decades of Biden’s policies on China. But the main focus is on China and the coronavirus.
“Joe Biden attacked Trump after the China travel ban,” said the spot’s narrator, followed by audio of the ex-vice president calling it “xenophobia and fear-mongering.” The ad continued, “For 40 years, Joe Biden has been wrong about China.” America First then cuts to a speech in which Biden declared, “I believed in 1979, and I believe now, that a rising China is a positive development.”
Trump, by contrast, has inveighed against this position for decades before entering politics. “I ran on China and other countries, the way they were ripping us off,” Trump recalled during Sunday’s White House press briefing. “They were ripping off our country. And China understood that.” But his desire to strike a trade deal with China, as well as secure the regime’s cooperation in getting needed medical supplies to the United States, has led him to equivocate publicly on Xi.
“The president can be harsh with foreign governments, but he also knows how to sweet-talk foreign leaders to get what he wants,” said a Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “Everyone knows that.”
“I find this to be a perplexing approach for Biden — trying to paint the president as soft on China is perhaps an attempt to paper over his own troubling apathy over the world’s second-largest economy, since he was on the campaign trail as recently as last spring saying China was ‘not competition’ for the U.S.,” said Mattie Duppler, strategist and senior fellow at the right-leaning National Taxpayers Union. “I don’t think any voter, particularly those farmers and manufacturers in the Midwest who have paid the price of the trade war through increased tariffs and retaliated export pressure, would look at President Trump and think he’s soft on China. The Biden campaign’s attempt to paint him as such seems much more likely an attempt to deflect from the vice president’s attitudes on a country that is quickly coming under scrutiny not just from the U.S., but the rest of the world.”
