Bannon And Bass: “China Is Most Significant Existential Threat The US Has Ever Faced”…(9…)
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 04/25/2019
Perhaps out of concern that his former boss might be pushing Robert Lighthizer and Steve Mnuchin to cave on enforcement, technology transfers and market access for the sake of securing a deal with Beijing, former White House Chief strategist Steve Bannon appeared alongside hedge fund manager Kyle Bass, Wall Street’s most visible China bear, to try and explain why Washington needs to stick to its guns and make sure Beijing is held to account for its decades of trade abuses.
Bass, who just the other day distributed his first investor letter in three years warning about a coming blowup in Hong Kong’s balance of payments, argued that the immense pressure for Trump to strike a deal isn’t coming from voters, but from Wall Street and corporate America, who have abetted Beijing in its efforts to maintain the status quo on trade – selling out their country in the process.
Drawing attention to something that few political analysts have been willing to discuss since the US-China trade spat erupted early last year, Bass broke down China’s lobbying strategy, which we highlighted here.
For years, Beijing has sought to curry favor with individual companies and industries by granting them piecemeal concessions, mostly in the form of market access. And since the start of the trade war, Beijing hasn’t been shy about calling in favors, which is why most of the American business and financial community just wants Trump to end the trade war, even if it means settling for a deal that achieves none of Washington’s objectives on ‘structural reform’, kicks the can on enforcement to Trump’s successor, and touts promises for purchases of billions of dollars of agricultural goods instead of meaningful changes.
“All the pressure on Trump to strike a trade deal is coming from Wall Street and corporate America,” Bass argued. “Look who fought CFIUS reform…some of the biggest companies in the US and Wall Street came together to fight it. Steve is right about who’s fighting…it’s corporate America fighting to get Trump to do a deal…and China plays that card and they play it better than anyone else…they open a market to very specific people to court influence.”
At the. beginning of the interview, Bannon warned that Americans are underestimating the threat posed by China, bringing up Huawei, 5G, ‘One Belt, One Road’ and China 2025′. As he repeatedly warned during the 2016 campaign, China represents “the most significant existential threat we have ever faced.”
“Look at what they’re doing…they have a geopolitical strategy to unite theEurasian land mass into one single market then to force the United States out of the Western Pacific then out of the Pacific overall. The radical cadre – this is not the Chinese people – this is about a radical cadre that is taking charge of the Communist Party led by President Xi…they’ve been running an economic war against the industrial democracies for 20 years.”
The Rest…HERE
