The “Chinese Vampire Will Suck UK’s Blood”, Says Trump’s Tariff Chief
Donald Trump’s tariffs chief has slammed Britain as a “compliant servant” of communist China, warning it risks having its “blood sucked” dry by Beijing. GB News has more.
Peter Navarro, the President’s tariffs tsar, urged the UK Government to reject “string-laden gifts” from China and avoid turning into a “dumping ground” for goods redirected from the US market.
In remarks likely to heighten tensions ahead of future UK-US trade talks, Navarro said: “If the Chinese vampire can’t suck the American blood, it’s going to suck the UK blood and the EU blood.
“This is a very dangerous time for the world economies with respect to exposure to China.”
Navarro, echoing concerns widely held in the Trump administration, voiced deep mistrust over Chinese involvement in UK real estate, infrastructure, and financial markets.
He continued to tell the Telegraph: “And let’s face it, the UK has been an all too compliant servant of the Chinese Communist Party because of the string-laden gifts that China gives as a way of spreading its soft power.”
Rachel Reeves and David Lammy have each undertaken prominent visits to China in recent months as part of the Labour Government’s strategy of what it describes as “pragmatic re-engagement” with Beijing.
The Chancellor and Foreign Secretary have emphasised the importance of maintaining a stable and balanced relationship with China – a partnership they argue could deliver a £1 billion boost to the UK economy over the next five years.
However, concerns are growing that the Government may prioritise reaching a deal with the European Union – potentially during a summit scheduled for May 19th – which some fear could complicate efforts to secure a trade agreement with the United States. …
As one of the most influential voices in Trump’s economic team, Navarro played a central role in shaping what the White House called “Liberation Day” on April 2nd – the moment the administration imposed a blanket 10% tariff on all trading partners, alongside steeper levies on many more countries. …
In his current role, Navarro hasn’t shied away from testing the boundaries of his influence, most notably by criticising Elon Musk, accusing Tesla of being too dependent on China for its operations.
Musk, who has referred to himself as Trump’s “first buddy,” hit back, calling Navarro “truly a moron” and likening him to “a sack of bricks”.
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I think Musk is spot on with this.
Nah, I disagree. I repeat, everything Musk says and does must be interpreted through the lens of the price of TSLA – the utterly-disconnected-from-any-reality-screaming-gigantic-corruption price of TSLA.
I am with Navarro on this. China employs extremely vicious mercantile policies. I am not saying the US doesn’t, nor that the US is some sort of angel in any regard, but if I had to choose between a relationship with China or one with the US – it would be the US.
I know it’s not possible to reduce these arguments to a binary decision, but sometimes simplicity helps.
China is a command and control economy and the UK should not be part of it.
Short term seems good, lots of cheap stuff, but such economies do not have the free market process to ration resources – including naturally occurring resources – all of which are scarce, therefore unlike free market economies which turn scarcity into abundance, economies like China just feed more and more resources into the machine until there are no more – then collapse. Exhibit A: USSR.
We need an industrial base – nit to lake all the old stuff – but to be the springboard for innovation, technical development for the new stuff.
When China’s economy goes down – and it will – so will ours.
What is all this anti-China stuff? Command and control economy? China wants to do business with everyone and anyone – which is a pretty good way of building up an economy. If you do not want to do business with China then take it somewhere else – nobody is stopping you.
USA’s sudden imposition of wildly varying tariffs is hardly the behaviour of a reliable business partner and is driving other countries straight into the arms of more serious countries, e.g. China.
You’re welcome to your opinion of course but I think if you look at the facts it is clear that China is pursuing an extremely aggressive and cynical mercantilistic policy, western governments and their useful idiots (plus the globalist bankers) are fully on board.
Well done to Trump and his team for taking the first steps to combat this deeply damaging strategy.
I think everyone is forgetting that places like the UK don’t produce much anymore because their manufacturing industry became uncompetitive.
Companies have located manufacturing in other countries because its cheaper.
It’s all very well to say we have to manufacture things at home and have our own industrial base but I don’t see too many people wanting to work in factories for wages that would make their products competitive.
Do people really know what things would cost if they were made in Britain? I don’t, but i suspect a lot more than. What they cost now. Could be wrong though. Don’t know really.
Because almost everything is made in China by slave labour under appalling working conditions.
The world’s factory.
I don’t know either. My instincts are towards global free markets, but there seem to be downsides to that in terms of the ability of a country to choose how to run its own affairs. I think it’s a debate worth having.
For there to be a global free market, there has to be internal free markets. There are none. All have regulations, subsidies, tax breaks, protectionism, fiat currencies, manipulated interest rates, which distorts free market economies – prime example the European Union.
Excellent point
Yeah, they all love to pay lip service to their free market credentials, just like they do with their faux democracy.
They are all DINO’s – Democracies In Name Only.
Ooh just look at our lovely shiny democracy, now shut up and go to jail for daring to question any of our (un)democratic policies, like Net Zero, immigration, asylum, benefits, energy policy, renewables, carbon capture, war with Russia, national military service, lockdowns, vaccines ………
A “global free market” would only work/exist if every country would play the same game. But China certainly has never played, is not playing and probably will never play that game. That’s the problem. I am not a fan of state control, but preventing a race to the bottom, preventing our home markets being flooded by artificially cheap goods which starve out the local goods that will never be as cheap (either because they are better and/or built by paid individuals as opposed to by slaves) is arguably a proper function of a sensible government. Identify the countries which play the free market game sufficiently well, and chose them above the rest.
Another spanner in the works is that people do really love cheap shit for the simple reason that it’s cheap…
I think a good starting point is to think about being self sufficient in the essentials – food, minerals, energy, maybe semiconductors (bit ambitious perhaps) so that we are less easily blackmailed by other countries/globalist cabals. I am all for freedom, including the freedom to buy cheap shit, but that choice has consequences. I still cling to the notion that making stuff is good for brain and body.
Just don’t confuse the idea of free markets with globalisation. The latter is authoritarian socialism pretending to be a variety of freedom.
Manufacturing became uncompetitive because it was State-owned from late 40s until the late 80s, unionised, over-staffed by greedy workers “owning the means of production”, who wanted more and more money for doing less and less.
Supposedly the profits from State-owned industry would flow into the Treasury for redistribution according to the Socialist model – but within a few years the flow was in the opposite direction.
High taxes and borrowing took capital out of the productive economy to prop up these industries and pay for the ever increasing cost of the unaffordable welfare State. Inadequate investment in these industries, low wages, high taxes meant they declined and we lost our best minds abroad in the “Brain Drain” of the 60s and 70s.
Until we get rid of the welfare state – so far it’s cost us £2.8 trillion in debt and increasing – and unproductive Government jobs, so we can stop borrowing, stop printing money and lower taxes, we are stuck circling the drain as we were by 1979.
It’s been a relentless socialist onslaught since WWII The liquidation of state owned assets in the 1980s gave the impression of a renaissance in free market capitalism but it was accompanied by an expansion of the state, so it was little more than a mirage.
I’ve followed Navarro on War Room for 4 years. He’s an astute man.
Check out where Starmer went a few weeks after the election.
Check out where Lammy went a few weeks later.
Check out where Reeves went after that.
All kow towing to the CCP.
The Americans aren’t fooled by Labour’s allegiance to the CCP, and are now playing hardball.
On Ukraine, Gaza, Palestinian Statehood, the EU and China, Trump is diametrically opposed to everything Starmer stands for.
Trade deal? Don’t make me laugh.
100%
Clumsily expressed but substantially true
I just do not understand this exaggerated animosity towards China and wonder how much is due to Trump impatiently wanting to get the Ukraine conflict out of the way so that he can focus his aggressions on China. Sure, China is a communist state and its involvement in the pandemic farce varied between silly (video films of supposed Corona victims laying in the streets) and fatally cruel (welding people into their flats which in once case subsequently caught fire, burning everyone alive). However, the treatment of the same topic in UK, for example, although being more subtle was equally effective. China is also well known for paying close attention to the behaviour of its citizens and clamping down on any signs of ‘misbehaviour’ but is UK really very different? How many security cameras are pointed in our direction each day? How much choice are we given, for example, on subjects such as net zero, immigration or LGBTQ? How free is our speech, when sometimes people are not even allowed to pray? China’s largest import and export fair, the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, closes today. This fair is so huge, it is split into three separate phases, each lasting a week.… Read more »