Ex-US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky says Donald Trump has ‘no policy’ on China
- Barshefsky, who served in the Clinton administration, also criticised the phase one trade deal for its tacit approval of China’s state managed economy
- Trump publicly contradicted his top trade official on Thursday, insisting that ‘complete decoupling’ from China remained an option
The United States’ former top trade negotiator excoriated the current administration on Thursday for having “no policy” on China and for pursuing a trade deal with Beijing that undermined long-standing efforts by past administrations to challenge its state-run economic model.
The Trump administration’s approach to China has been characterised by inconsistent messaging by top US officials, who are themselves contradicted by the president himself, said Charlene Barshefsky, who served as the US trade representative for four years during Bill Clinton’s administration.
“What that tells me is that the US has no policy with respect to China,” said Barshefsky, who oversaw China’s accession into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001. “It may have personal predilection, there may be individual pronouncements made by people in the administration, but that’s not a policy.”
Her comments, made at a webinar event hosted by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), came as US President Donald Trump publicly contradicted his current trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, who told a congressional panel on Wednesday that decoupling from China was not “a reasonable policy option”.
“It was not Ambassador Lighthizer’s fault )yesterday in Committee) in that perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, but the U.S. certainly does maintain a policy option, under various conditions, of a complete decoupling from China,” Trump tweeted on Thursday. “Thank you!”