Mike Pompeo on China trade war: ‘We are going to win it’

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vowed that the US would emerge victorious in an intensifying trade war with China, a day before Washington imposes US$200 billion worth of tariffs.

“We are going to win it,” Pompeo said in an interview on Fox News broadcast Sunday.

“We’re going to get an outcome which forces China to behave in a way that if you want to be a power – a global power – transparency, rule of law, you don’t steal intellectual property,” he said.

Pompeo said that US President Donald Trump “very much likes” his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping but said he would press policies that “the American workers deserve.”

Even before Trump’s election, the United States has complained vigorously that China has been unfair to US businesses and has stolen technology by forcing firms to reveal secrets as a condition to operate in the fast-growing Asian economy.

But Trump has taken an increasingly hard line on trade around the world, with US$200 billion in tariffs on Chinese exports set to take effect on Monday.

China imposes tariffs on US$60 billion worth of US imports

China has retaliated by hitting US$60 billion in US products and the world’s two largest economies have already imposed tariffs of US$50 billion on each other.

In a first, the Trump administration has also punished a unit of China’s defence ministry for buying fighter jets and missiles from Russia in defiance of sanctions on Moscow.