Trump To Axios: I Haven’t Sanctioned China For Human Rights Abuses Because Of The Trade Deal

“Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal”, Donald Trump told Axios’s Jonathan Swan, during an exclusive interview, excerpts from which were published on Sunday evening.

The president was responding to a question about why he hasn’t moved forward with sanctions on Chinese officials in connection with human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The remarks to Axios appear to support (if not validate) John Bolton’s claim that Trump blessed Xi’s mass detention of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. (Trump denies this.)

Read more: Markets Warily Eye Trump-Xi Dynamic Amid ‘Book Of Bolton’ Furor

In his account, Bolton asserts that during a conversation with the Chinese last year, “Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang”. “According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do”, Bolton writes, in his hotly-anticipated memoir which was cleared for release after a judge denied the administration’s attempt to keep it from the public.

It’s hardly news that Trump would subjugate human rights concerns to the trade deal. It is, however, remarkable that he would so readily admit to doing so in an interview conducted after the excerpts from Bolton’s book were already public.

“And I made a great deal, $250 billion potentially worth of purchases. And by the way, they’re buying a lot, you probably have seen”, Trump told Swan. He added the following:

When you’re in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on – we’ve done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of.

A couple of things are worth noting. First, it’s not necessarily true that tariffs are “far worse than any sanction you can think of”. But, more importantly, this is either a bizarre act of self-sabotage, or else an example of the president being genuinely oblivious to the implications of what he’s just said.

The push to sanction China for the Party’s treatment of the Uighurs is one of the only issues around which there is almost unanimous bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

The White House said Trump finally signed legislation green-lighting the sanctions late Wednesday. The announcement came at virtually the same time the related excerpts from Bolton’s book were made public. The sections related to the Uighurs were published by The Wall Street Journal.

The House passed the legislation 413-1 last month, and Trump was expected to sign it shortly thereafter. Instead, it sat on his his desk for weeks.

It’s true that the administration has taken a variety of steps to hold China accountable. In October, for example, the White House slapped travel bans on some Chinese officials. Around the same time, Trump blacklisted a hodgepodge of Chinese surveillance firms. On May 22, the Commerce department made a similar move against a handful of additional entities. Mike Pence has paid all manner of lip service to the idea that China must be punished, as has Mike Pompeo.

But Trump has repeatedly demurred when pressed by lawmakers to personally (and forcefully) rebuke Xi on human rights, whether with regard to Hong Kong or the situation in Xinjiang.

Like the Uighurs legislation, he only signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act into law after Congress left him with no choice. The timing (in November of last year) was very bad for the trade talks. Somehow, he managed to keep the “phase one” deal on track, likely through back-channeling or undisclosed discussions with Xi.

Now, we have Trump, on the record, telling Jonathan Swan that he has refrained from sanctions for the sole purpose of advancing the trade talks. The president offered the following word salad on the Magnitsky Act (which, you’re reminded, he was encouraged to invoke against Mohammed Bin Salman):

When you say the Magnitsky Act, just so you know, nobody’s mentioned it specifically to me with regard to China If somebody asked me, I would take a look at it. But nobody’s asked me. I have not been spoken to about the Magnitsky Act. So if somebody asks me about it, I’d study it. But at this moment, they have not asked me about it.

Trump denies Bolton’s claim that he specifically told Xi he was fine with the detention camps, but we now know, straight from the president, that has held off on sanctions in order to facilitate the trade deal.

Again, that is not surprising (at all), but it’s astonishing that he would make it so explicit given the accusations leveled by Bolton, who also claimed that Trump directly linked Chinese purchases of US farm goods with the 2020 election in a face-to-face discussion with Xi.

On whether he did, in fact, ask Xi to increase purchases of US agricultural products in order to help him win votes in 2020, Trump told Swan the following:

No, not at all. What I told everybody we deal with – not just President Xi – I want them to do business with this country. I want them to do a lot more business with this country.

By the way, what’s good for the country is good for me. What’s good for the country is also good for an election. But I don’t go around saying, ‘Oh, help me with my election.’

Why would I say that?

I can answer that question: It’s the same reason he told Volodymyr Zelensky that if Ukraine “did us a favor”, the US would move ahead with military assistance.

Trump does not differentiate between his own personal interests and those of the country. He sees them as synonymous. But, as we’ve seen time and again, they are not.