CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – If there was ever a week for the Republican presidential candidates to talk tough on China, this was it. Spurred by the stock market’s wild ride, they lashed out at the world’s most populous nation.
Wisconsin’s Scott Walker demanded that President Barack Obama cancel an upcoming state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Mike Huckabee said the next president should “build America’s economy, not China’s or Mexico’s.” Donald Trump said the U.S. economy needs to “do a big uncoupling pretty soon, before it’s too late.”
It’s rhetoric that doesn’t always square with the realities of the relationship between the world’s two largest economies, said experts on America’s ties with China, even if it does make for nifty campaign sound bites.
“When you’re in the early phases of the primary season, and you don’t have a lot in the way of foreign policy bona fides, a surefire applause line is to go to the extreme – and in the case of China that’s always a very easy thing to do,” said Jon Huntsman, a former Republican governor of Utah and U.S. ambassador to China under Obama.
No candidate went further than Trump, whose pledge to bring back to the U.S. the roughly 2 million jobs lost to China since 1999 is a centerpiece of his campaign. “Not only now have they taken our jobs … but now they are pulling us down with them,” he said Monday amid a worldwide swoon in stock prices.