United States waking up to Chinese abuses, US Senator Elizabeth Warren says in Beijing
After years of pursuing economic engagement, policymakers now ‘starting to look more aggressively at pushing China to open its markets’
US policy towards China has been misdirected for decades and policymakers are now recalibrating ties, US Senator Elizabeth Warren told reporters during a visit to Beijing amid heightened trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
Warren’s visit comes as US President Donald Trump prepares to implement trade tariffs on more than US$50 billion worth of Chinese goods designed to punish the country over US allegations that Beijing systematically misappropriated American intellectual property.
The Massachusetts Democrat and Trump foe, who has been touted as a potential 2020 presidential candidate despite rejecting such speculation, said US trade policy needed a rethink and that she was not afraid of tariffs.
After years of mistakenly assuming economic engagement would lead to a more open China, the US government was waking up to Chinese demands for US companies to give up their know-how in exchange for access to its market, Warren said.
“The whole policy was misdirected. We told ourselves a happy-face story that never fit with the facts,” she said on Saturday, during a three-day visit to China that began on Friday.