US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said, asserting that it is “imperative” to flip the nature of the ties with Beijing to get on equal footing.
US President Donald Trump wants a relationship with China that is fair and balanced and where one nation does not threaten another, or another set of countries’ livelihoods.
The ties between the US and China strained after Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, demanding Beijing to reduce the massive trade deficit, which was $375.6 billion in 2017.
It suffered another blow due to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has repeatedly called coranavirus as “China virus” and blamed Beijing for mishandling the outbreak. China, however, has denied the accusation.
“We have to fundamentally use the set of tools we have, the power that the United States has to simply demand a set of fair and reciprocal relationships in every dimension with China,” Pompeo said in an exchange with Wisconsin State Senator Roger Roth at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Wednesday.
“I get asked another element of this question. It’s, ‘Well, what does President Trump want this to look like? What does the relationship look like five, 10, 15, 20 years from now?’ And the answer is it looks like a relationship that is fair and balanced and where one nation doesn’t threaten another, or another set of countries’ livelihoods. And so that’s what we’ve been driving towards,” he said.
The US welcomes it when China shows up and competes on a fair and equitable basis and is a supplier to a company, he said.
“But what we see in far too many cases is the flip side of that, which is an inequitable relationship, people who won’t respect property,– where there’s no remedy, there’s no judicial remedy for these wrongs, and it is a predatory activity that is just simply unacceptable to allow to continue,” he alleged.
