Donald Trump makes targeting China center of his election campaign

President Donald Trump made attacks on China an organizing principle of his Republican convention speech Thursday – accusing the country of allowing the coronavirus to spread around the world and claiming Joe Biden would be beholden to the rising power. 

Trump repeatedly referenced the ‘China virus’ when talking about the disease, laced references to China throughout his hour-long address at the White House, and blasted Biden for supporting trade legislation that he characterized as a giveaway of American jobs. Many people consider the term a slur.

‘In recent months, our nation, and the rest of the world, has been hit with a once-in-a-century pandemic that China allowed to spread around the globe,’ Trump said, in one of several references to the pandemic in Thursday’s programming.

‘When the China Virus hit, we launched the largest national mobilization since World War II,’ Trump said, touting his handling of the pandemic as have a skein of convention speakers, even as the number of infected Americans approached 6 million. 

He told 1,500 cheering supporters at the White House: ‘We will go right after China.  We will not rely on them one bit.’

Trump claimed that Biden’s ‘agenda is Made in China,’ adding: ‘My agenda is Made in the USA.’  

Underlining the focus on the issue, the word ‘China’ appeared 15 times in his remarks. 

Trump intoned: ‘He oversaw the rise of ISIS, and cheered the rise of China as “a positive development” for America and the world. That’s why China supports Joe Biden and desperately wants him to win,’ Trump said.

‘I can tell you that upon very good information,’ Trump appeared to ad-lib.

Biden did make the comment, at a summit in 2011 at the White House opening ‘U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue.’

It was part of an administration effort to find areas cooperation with China, even as the emerging power an the U.S. faced off on areas of trade, espionage, and regional power plays, and try to prod it more into the community of major powers. 

‘As a young member of a Foreign Relations Committee, I wrote and I said and I believed then what I believe now: That a rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ large,’ Biden said. 

Trump’s reference to China wanting a Biden win is drawn from a recent U.S. intelligence assessment. The assessment stated: ‘We assess that China prefers that President Trump — whom Beijing sees as unpredictable — does not win reelection.”

The same intel statement said Russia was actively working to ‘denigrate’ Biden. 

‘China would own our country if Joe Biden got elected,’ Trump claimed. 

Trump’s China pitch was reinforced by an earlier speech by ultra loyalist Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who said in his convention speech China was ‘rooting for Joe Biden.” 

Trump called Biden’s 47-year record a ‘shameful roll call of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders in our lifetime.’

He touted his support for NAFTA, and bringing China into the World Trade Organization, which he called a disaster.  

 At one point, Trump tied his China theme to incidents of Biden touching or people people in public who later said it made them feel uncomfortable. 

‘For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses, and told them he felt their pain – and then he flew back to Washington and voted to ship their jobs to China and many other distant lands,’ Trump said, trying to take the shine off some of the Biden empathy built up at his own convention.

‘Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing the dreams of American Workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders, and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars,’ he said. 

Biden hit back with a series of tweets, including one on the coronavirus. ‘From the moment COVID-19 emerged, President Trump downplayed the threat it posed, refused to listen to the experts, and failed to take action to contain its spread. Now, we’re paying the price,’ he wrote. 

Trump also blasted China during the 2016 presidential campaign. then maneuvered the U.S. into a prolonged trade war. The U.S. and China ultimately agreed to a ‘Phase One’ deal where China agreed to buy billions in U.S. ag products.