A friend of mine from Radio, recently asked me: if they somehow called me to mediate the commercial dispute with China and communist America … What would you do?
I replied: give up the position immediately and get another job.
Why am I so pessimistic?
Because, for more than two years, when I worked on the first mandate of President Donald Trump as its director of the National Economic Council, I was part of the China commercial team.
We had apparently endless meetings with our Chinese counterparts, and that was when I knew they are impossible.
Actually, the whole exercise reached nothing.
The leader of our team was the brilliant Bob Lighthizer, who served as the United States commercial representative and taught me a lot about unfair commercial practices, especially with China, but frankly also with the rest of the world.
And Mr. Lighthizer also taught me how important it was to protect United States advanced technology entrepreneurs and their intellectual property.
He produced a book about this that was also incredible revelation to me to see how China was the world leader in intellectual property robbery. And the world leader in forced technology transfers.
What does not understand so many people is that almost all US companies operate in China are managed by the Chinese, because the joints were controlled by them in 51 percent to 49 percent, or worse. Those were the rules established by the Chinese Communist Party.
And the Chinese could force the US company to develop its technology as part of the communist government’s policy.
Therefore, the forced transfer of our family jewels.
I remember that in 2018 we traveled to Beijing for a great Powwow with several Chinese leaders, where it turned out that there were two honest reformers that I can remember, and the other dozens of Chinese players were robots of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, took the initiative in basic products negotiations, and gave me help to help him.
We spent a whole day going through raw materials, agriculture, food, manufacturers, energy.
We establish Chinese import objectives and export objectives of the United States and then discussed these objectives during the next two years.
Former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross broken down the tariff conversations with China in ‘Kudlow’.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Mnuchin, took the initiative of the financial companies and the capacity of any American company that operates in China to possess and manage its own companies.
He had some little successes, but in general, we could never penetrate the Chinese communist guard.
Lighthizer was the leader of our team, dealing with general panel items, such as the theft of intellectual property and a million other things in which he and his representative American trade team worked.
We meet with Chinese delegates in Washington, DC in many times, we never move forward.
Little by little, over time, we reach some parameters, which were known as the trade agreement of phase 1 Us-China.
At the end of 2019, at the G-20 meeting in Buenos Aires, we had more meetings with the Chinese and finally a great banquet dinner, where President Trump and the Chinese directed us for Xi Jinping.
I remember the first question that Mr. Trump asked Mr. XI: Can you stop the fentanyl trade and make fentanyl suppliers subject to capital punishment? And, without hitting, Mr. Xi immediately said yes. Of course, I was lying.
The agreement of phase 1 was signed in January 2020, in the middle of a lot of Ballyhoo. The Chinese never implemented it.
Even while the signature ceremony continued in the White House, China was desperately trying to cover the Covid outbreak that plagued his country, starting in a Wuhan laboratory, before spreading around the world and killing millions. We lost more than a million Americans. A horrible tragedy.
China has never recognized it, and to this day it continues to deny that the virus has been born in its Wuhan laboratory.
But the Chinese proceeded to ignore the so -called Commercial Agreement of Phase 2, for the land that Covid stopped everything.
But Covid has basically gone for several years. However, China continues its theft of intellectual property, its forced transfer of technology, and completely ignore all the numerical objectives for the various products that Mr. Ross and I help create.
The ‘Kudlow’ Panelists Elizabeth Macdonald, Gerri Willis and Clay Travis discuss responding to unfair commercial practices in China.
Just a week ago, I spent an hour with a good friend, whose companies have operated in China for many decades. He remains in close contact with all senior officials.
And I offered the opinion that China was increasingly under state communist control, that the whole society had been tight in an oppressive way.
What he told me was: You’re right.
And then he added: Xi Jinping is much more than a president of China: he sees himself as an emperor of China. With powers even greater than Mao Zedong never.
Mr. XI has a grip of Ironclad on all parts of Chinese society and politics. Does not tolerate dissent.
That is why I would never think about mediating between the United States and China.
And that is why Mr. Trump is right by putting the heat of the rate in the XI Jinping economy similar to the emperor.
An emperor whose lasting legacy will ruin China.
