Bannon says US is being ‘crushed’ by China in an economic war, as he describes his clashes with Trump’s other advisers

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.

“That’s a fight I fight every day here,” Bannon is quoted as saying in the interview published in with The American Prospect on Wednesday. He pointed to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, both alumni of Goldman Sachs, who are pushing for a softer stance on trade with China. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”

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.

Bannon said he favours pushing back against Chinese economic expansion, arguing only one country will emerge as a leader from what he described as an “economic war.”