ExclusiveDon’t wait for a friendly White House, Steve Bannon tells China
- A Democrat will be just as tough on Beijing, former Trump adviser predicts
- Strategist says the relationship between the two countries will be a central issue in the 2020 campaign
Beijing should give up any hope that it can wait out the Donald Trump years for a less antagonistic administration, according to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who predicts that China will feature prominently in the 2020 US presidential election.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Bannon also launched a blistering attack on the Wall Street “corporatists”, saying they had been working together with China’s ruling elites to preserve “an unfair system” and hurt the interests of American workers.
Bannon – often credited with masterminding the populist movement that helped get Trump elected in 2016 – parted ways with the president the following year after a high-profile falling out. These days he runs the Committee on the Present Danger – a cold war-era advocacy group that, under his leadership, now targets China.
While Bannon did not say if he would be involved in Trump’s re-election campaign, he predicted that the US relationship with China would be a central issue in the race and that the next president – whoever wins – would get tough on Beijing.
“The China relationship is going to be the central theme of this election of 2020,” Bannon said. “The person who’s going to be elected in 2020 is going to be Donald Trump, but if it’s not, the person who wins the election, be it a Democrat or not, will be as big or a bigger hawk than Donald Trump.”