Bannon says US is being ‘crushed’ by China in an economic war, as he describes his clashes with Trump’s other advisers
In unfettered interview, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon says he fights Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn ‘every day’ as he urges them to get tough with Beijing
White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has gone public his long-simmering feud with some of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers, saying in an interview that he battles them often, especially over his determination to take a tougher position on China.
Bannon said the US and China were already in an “economic war”, that the US was losing.
To me, the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that
The interview was conducted Tuesday by the magazine’s co-editor Robert Kuttner, who said Bannon told him he reached out because he agreed with Kuttner’s past writings on China. Bannon rarely speaks with reporters on the record, let alone a liberal-leaning magazine.
The interview with Bannon comes as the White House has struggled to respond to Saturday’s violent racial protests in Charlottesville, Virginia and as some aides - including Cohn - have objected in private to Trump’s restrained denunciations of white supremacists. Bannon approved of the president’s approach, officials in the administration who asked not to be named have said.
Bannon, who also once worked at Goldman Sachs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the interview.
In the interview Bannon said his rivals in the administration are “wetting themselves” as he works to undermine their influence with the president and he bragged about working to get some of them ousted. There has been speculation in recent days that Bannon could be in danger of losing his job, though Trump spoke in supportive terms about him at Tuesday’s press conference.
Ethno-nationalism – it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much
“To me, the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, 10 years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover,“ he said.
He advocated for the US to file a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act - which allows for sanctions against countries that violate trade agreements or engage in unfair trade practices - as well as follow-up complaints against steel and aluminium dumping, Kuttner wrote.
“We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us,” Bannon said.
Bannon also dismissed speculation that the US might consider using military action against North Korea to get the regime there to abandon its intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear weapon programmes. Trump recently vowed to deliver “fire and fury” onto North Korea.
“There’s no military solution, forget it,” Bannon said. “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”
Bannon also was dismissive in the interview of the so called far-right that he helped organise and inflame when he led Breitbart News and during Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“Ethno-nationalism – it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more,” he said. “These guys are a collection of clowns.”
Still, Bannon said he’s fine with the issue of race taking over the national conversation. “The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em,“ he is quoted as saying. ”I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
