As Matt writes nearby, on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a complete economic and trade reset with China that is aimed at bridging a lopsided $1.2 trillion trade deficit with the U.S.
Details of the new agreement are promised on Monday, but let’s take a look at the abundant differences we can see between Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s approaches with China.
While people love to tout Trump’s “art of the deal” transactional dealmaking with super powers, it was actually Joe Biden who leveraged his job as vice president and then as president to personally enrich his son’s “business” and, by extension, his own personal bottom line.
Biden encouraged his son’s ferociously greedy dealings with the Chinese energy firms and even fronted a deal for China to get raw earth minerals to help with the communist state’s electric car battery production and to help its notorious “Belt and Road Initiative.”
At one point, Hunter Biden and family were paid in diamonds in an apparent obvious attempt to avoid paying taxes.
Hunter’s company, Rosemont Seneca, whose business product was Joe Biden, helped China’s takeover of a cobalt mine from an American company in the Congo. It was a $3.8 billion deal.
As we now know, Hunter’s businesses always had to kick back “10% to ‘The Big Guy.'”
Related: Trump Wins Again: New Trade Deal With China Announced
His investment firm was involved in a deal where a Chinese state-backed company gained control of a cobalt mine. This deal involved a $3.8 billion transaction and transferred 80% ownership of the Tenke Fungurum mine from an American company to China Molybdenum.
When Joe Biden was vice president he took his granddaughter and his family bagman, Hunter Biden, on Air Force Two to China.
While Joe Biden was discussing world relations with Ji Xingping, Hunter was off sealing deals for the Biden family. The senior Biden always claimed he had no personal knowledge of his son’s business dealings, but on that trip then-Vice President Biden met with Xi Jingping for hours and thereafter introduced him to his son.
President Biden kept that photo under wraps for years. It wasn’t until shortly before he left office that America First Legal was able to sue the National Archives to get a look at the damning photos.
Feds finally release photos showing then-VP Biden meeting son Hunter’s China biz partners — days before he leaves office https://t.co/ImBMooJnGg pic.twitter.com/WUnfGzIYie
— New York Post (@nypost) December 27, 2024
Just ten days later, Hunter’s company was given the proper licenses enabling him to do business in China.
NBC reports that Hunter met with a Chinese banker while joining then-VP Biden’s official 2013 trip to China.
Hunter was trying to form a Chinese privet equity fund.
Just 10 days after the trip Chinese authorities issued the funds business license. pic.twitter.com/LBf3xrCVKZ
— Kelly Sadler (@KellyRiddell) April 10, 2020
In the first year of his presidency, Biden kept Trump’s previous tariffs schedule but was decidedly much more lenient in every other way.
Indeed, Joe Biden’s Secretary of state, Tony Blinken, and National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were laughed out of talks with China held in Alaska. The scripted meeting turned into an hour-plus-long taunt-fest by the Chinese, who completely flipped the script to highlight what they said were America’s human rights violations and racial inequities– specifically invoking Black Lives Matter.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan opened their meeting with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi in Anchorage, Alaska, sparring in a highly unusual back-and-forth in front of cameras https://t.co/cl3SoVXQmE pic.twitter.com/pLcC69Omf6
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 19, 2021
But Sullivan and Blinken’s weak-kneed diplomacy was no match for the blustering and undiplomatic Chinese who knew they could use their white guilt, the memory of the George Floyd riots, and the specter of Black Lives Matter disapprobation to keep from U.S. chest beating. The Chinese accused the Americans of being hypocrites with no moral authority to dictate to the Chinese how to conduct themselves.
For Our VIPs: ‘And Joe Worked Really Hard!’ Oh, Please.
Less than a year later, still cowed by that embarrassment, Blinken, Biden, and company ordered the Justice Department to stop the Trump Administration’s “China Initiative,” which took a jaundiced view of the communist state’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to entice Five Eye nations to resist China’s economic enticements.
The point of the initiative was to resist the use of these infrastructure improvements to enhance China’s ability to spy on the West and steal technology.
Joe Biden ended it in 2022 and instead of viewing the Belt and Road Initiative with national security skepticism, chose to bury Chinese scrutiny in the bowels of the DOJ, which brought a few cases of corporate espionage.
As Chinese bought up U.S. farmland in shady deals using financial cutouts, as they did in California and near U.S. military installations, they were also sending up spy balloons that were laconically hovering over sensitive U.S. installations.
The head of the Joint Chiefs under Trump 45 and Biden, General Mark Milley, declared to the world the China was not “an enemy” even though it was stealing military technology and acting like a dog with a bone in the South China Sea.
NBC reports that Hunter met with a Chinese banker while joining then-VP Biden’s official 2013 trip to China.
Hunter was trying to form a Chinese privet equity fund.
Just 10 days after the trip Chinese authorities issued the funds business license. pic.twitter.com/LBf3xrCVKZ
— Kelly Sadler (@KellyRiddell) April 10, 2020
Milley is also the one who told Biden not to shoot down the spy balloons.
What you’ll find in this latest deal with a clear-eyed Trump 47 Administration is a reputed win, win.
Among the high points is that it “reduces” the Trump 47 tariffs from 145% to 80%, which are much higher than Trump 45 tariffs.
It’s touted as toughening rules against China’s trade practices, which included forced IP transfer, and allows U.S. companies to compete in the country.
It stops China from further circling the drain from its housing and population crises, and it helps the people of the United States.
And that’s the biggest difference: Trump does it for the American people, and not China, and Joe cuts deals to help himself.
The Trump family has made out well since he became president, which is one reason why Jared Kushner does not hold a position in the Trump 47 Administration and why Melania Trump got a sweet production deal from Amazon Prime for a personal documentary.
But there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump: He doesn’t need this gig for a paycheck or for a “10% for The Big Guy” cut of the action.
Editor’s Note: The Deep State is working overtime to subvert President Trump’s agenda and the will of the people.
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