GOP frontrunner Donald Trump tells Breitbart News Daily during a wide-ranging interview that China’s manipulation of its currency is a “great weapon” against the U.S.
He’s also slamming Obamatrade’s secret multilateral deals made with groups of nations as a “horror show.”
[ Katie McHugh | November 2, 2015 | Breitbart ]
Executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon pointed out that one of Trump’s major campaign issues is trade, although CNBC was reluctant to talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Whether financing, building a hotel, or acquiring a property, buying an asset, the contract is everything, Bannon said. “In TPP, you have these massive trade deals, as you know, enormously complicated, with 10, 12, 15 countries” involved. The legislation is kept in a secret vault where lawmakers can only visit part of the time.
“With you as president or commander-in-chief, would you allow us to get into these multi-lateral trade deals that are so complex, where you can’t fully vet all the details in the deal itself?” Bannon asked.
“My opinion, that deal was made for China,” Trump said. “You watch. China is going to come in through the back door. China’s going to come in and take advantage of that deal through the back door, you watch.”
“You know I’m very much opposed to that deal. Very much opposed to that deal,” he continued. “First of all, we should be making trade deals with individual countries, not a big group like that.”
“The way the Founders had it set up. Do bilateral trade agreements. And bring them back to the Senate,” Bannon said, adding that the president must argue before the Senate why this or that particular deal is worth passing.
“Look, in that group we’ve had countries that treat us badly,” Trump said.
And we’ve had countries where we get along well with them, and it’s been fine Well, the ones that treat us badly are getting the benefits of the deal because of the ones that treat us well. But the whole thing is crazy. Here’s the worst part: Monetary manipulation. They manipulate their currencies, right? It’s not even covered in the deal.
The single greatest weapon that all of these countries have and use against us — whether it’s Japan, or China, or Brazil, anybody — is currency manipulation, OK? They manipulate their currency. And you know, they downgrade it. I mean, it doesn’t sound good, but is sure as hell works. And the greatest one in history for currency manipulation has been China. They’re the great geniuses of this. So we don’t want — it’s not even covered in the trade deal.
Tremendous numbers of very smart people are totally against this deal.
Trump added, “this deal is a disaster. But the single biggest point is not even mentioned in the agreement. And frankly, most people don’t even know what is mentioned, because if you want to see the agreement, you can’t even read it. So I know you’re against it. I think it’s a horror show.”
