Nobody was safe during Donald Trump’s address at the UN General Assembly.
The speech was an odd combination of “teleprompter Trump”, “nationalist crusader Trump” and “foreign policy hawk Trump”. That amalgamation manifested itself in the deliberate, menacing monotone the US president employed in the course of addressing a laundry list of foes and grievances and tilting at a collection of familiar windmills.
China didn’t escape his scorn, even as the tenuous truce that’s buoyed market sentiment in September and paved the way for the resumption of principal-level talks in Washington next month, remains as fragile as ever. “As jobs were outsourced, a small handful grew wealthy at the expense of the middle class”, Trump said of free trade, without even a hint of irony to account for the fact that he is, by his account anyway, extremely wealthy.
“In America, the result was 4.2 million lost manufacturing jobs and $15 trillion in trade deficits”, he continued, before directly addressing China as follows:
The US is now taking decisive action to end this grave economic injustice. Our goal is simple: We want balanced trade that is both fair and reciprocal… The most important difference in our new approach to trade concerns our relationship with China. In 2001, China was admitted to the WTO. Our leaders then argued that this decision would compel China to liberalize its economy and strengthen protections. Two decades later, this theory has been tested and proven completely wrong. Not only has China declined to adopt promised reforms it has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers, heavy state subsidies, currency manipulation, product dumping, forced technology transfer and the theft of intellectual property and also trade secrets on a grand scale.
That is the opposite of conciliatory and is most assuredly not what the market wanted to hear at a time when traders and investors are hoping against hope that the next round of talks (starting on October 7) will produce some manner of breakthrough, if not the fabled “interim” agreement that Trump suggested earlier this month he’d be willing to consider.
The US president went on to insist that the WTO “needs drastic change” (a contention that most observers would agree with, by the way, only not because Trump said it) and charged that “the second largest economy in the world should not be allowed to declare itself a developing country in order to game the system”.
Ultimately, one hopes the thrust of Tuesday’s China comments at the UN was conveyed to Xi ahead of time, because this kind of full-on, verbal assault touching on precisely the issues at the heart of the trade debate has, in the past, prompted rebukes from Beijing.
The last thing the global economy (not to mention risk assets, including and especially equities) need right now, is for talks to completely break down again, leading to more threats, more escalations and more animosity.
Read more from Trump’s UN address
Trump Details Vast Social Media, Academic Conspiracy Against American ‘Values’ At UN
Trump Calls Iran A ‘Fanatical Threat To Peace-Loving Nations’ Everywhere
Trump’s Anti-Globalist, ‘National Renewal’ Screed At UN Was Disturbing, If Predictable
You left out his initial campaign speech listing how great things are since his election. I’m sure his audience was riveted and full of admiration.
he uses any gains or positive attitude towards the financial mkts as his own political capital. mkts up? good now I can go throw shade.
Disparaging China via tweet is one thing. Standing in front of the world’s representatives and unequivocally disparaging China is quite another. The formality of it was striking. We’re accustomed to off-the-cuff lampooning, but this is something far more chilling to hear.
“We want balanced trade that is both fair and reciprocal… ” Another stone-cold lie. Trump and hawks throughout the U.S. military/security complex are hell-bent on global American superpower hegemony for…well, forever. Clearly, none of them has ever read any history.
The impeachment can’t happen fast enough.
The Trump administration seems internally not well coordinated. It would not be surprising if China was not given a heads-up on Trump’s speech. Even if it was, the speech was so implacably hostile that a courtesy notice may not have helped. Bringing Hong Kong into it doesn’t help either.