Larry Kudlow: US needs to ‘kick butt’ to get trade deal with China
- The White House’s chief economic adviser argues that strong-arm tactics are needed, especially with Beijing
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Doug Palmer on politico.com on June 13, 2019.
White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Thursday defended President Donald Trump’s combative approach to trade negotiations, but acknowledged there aren’t any formal plans yet for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 leaders summit later this month.
“You know how you get from here to there, Fred? You kick some butt,” Kudlow said during an onstage conversation with Fred Bergsten, the president emeritus of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “You kick some butt, in my best economic analytical quantitative regression analysis.”
Kudlow’s comments on the Trump administration’s philosophy toward persuading China and other trading countries to lower their barriers were made before an audience of economists that has been sceptical about Trump’s use of tariffs to pressure other countries to change their behaviour. But Kudlow argued the strong-arm tactics were needed, especially with Beijing.
“We didn’t start this,” Kudlow said. “What I will call the China problem has been going on for a long time, several decades. But President Trump is the first guy in these several decades to take strong actions to remedy a very unbalanced trading relationship, where the Chinese have violated international trade law.”
Bergsten pushed back, arguing it was far from clear that the “butt-kicking approach” would work on a country as big as China. In addition, many American companies rely on imports from China to make final goods. Increasing the price of those items makes American companies less competitive with other suppliers and hurts their exports, Bergsten said.