May 8, 2019 - Steve Pieczenik
04:25
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi, this is Dr. | |
| Pachenik, and what I want to talk about is Trump's recent threat to the Chinese that he will impose 25% import tax on all of their products, tariff, basically. | |
| I agree with him. | |
| Although it's very rough what he's saying because I, like many of the other day traders, are losing thousands of dollars because the markets are frightened of Trump, the reality is he is doing what none of the other presidents had to do and did not do. | |
| Bill Clinton and Hillary were paid off by mainland Chinese. | |
| I knew about this in 1988-89 when Bill Clinton was already in Taiwan, the mainland Chinese had already compromised him. | |
| Bush and Cheney were already highly compromised. | |
| They were ineffectual in dealing with the Chinese. | |
| More importantly, Obama, who said and warned the Chinese and President Xi Jinping and others, do not build up the Spratly Islands, do not militarize it. | |
| The Chinese agreed with him and of course they went on to build up the Spratly Islands. | |
| Now, I happen to know something about Chinese negotiation because decades ago I developed the strategy and the tactics for our secretaries of state and our subordinates in the State Department to learn how to negotiate against the Chinese. | |
| We had an opening, a middle, and an end. | |
| The point of fact that I said to most of my State Department officials was the fact that the Chinese will always maneuver. | |
| They will always renegotiate. | |
| And in fact, they will lie. | |
| And this is what happened this time around. | |
| However, for the first time, we have a president who's a businessman in the art of the deal. | |
| He said, if you're not consistent with your obligations and you're not consistent with what you claim that you want to do, then you will pay very heavily for it. | |
| And that's exactly what Trump is doing. | |
| He has very good negotiators on the front line. | |
| Steve Mnuchin, I know about. | |
| I don't know him personally, but he's an excellent businessman. | |
| He was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, but more importantly, he became a very well-known executive producer in Hollywood and did quite a few excellent films. | |
| The other person whom I don't know personally, but I know a lot about, Mike Pillsbury, who's the China expert in John Bolton's team. | |
| Mike is somebody who I've known about for 30, 40 years. | |
| He was at the Rand Corporation before me. | |
| He was an Asian scholar. | |
| He knows Chinese very well. | |
| He knows the Chinese mentality very well. | |
| And he's very strong when it comes to the Chinese in terms of negotiation. | |
| He will not accept their concessions or their terms until he reinforces exactly what it is that he or Trump might want. | |
| So, in fact, Trump has a very strong team when it comes to China. | |
| From my perspective, this is just the beginning of what China has to learn about itself. | |
| President Xi, as I said, is not a man who really obtained any major accomplishments in China. | |
| His daughter went to Harvard and his right-hand man, Lee Hu, H-E, also went to Harvard and in economics, Lee. | |
| Lee will probably negotiate an agreement with Trump and his people and probably make some concessions so that the tariffs do not have to be imposed. | |
| But the real warning to the Chinese is the following. | |
| When I was there decades ago, I warned them against building the Spratly Islands and militarizing it. | |
| They agreed with me and then they went and they militarized the Spratly Islands. | |
| I wrote about this in a book called Pax Pacifica and the only one who really understood what I was saying 20 years ago and what I was saying about the danger of the Spratly Islands was the former DCI and Ambassador to China, James Lilly, who really understood that I had picked up in fiction what in reality would become a headache for us now in the South China Sea. | |
| Trump is actually acting as the most efficient and effective businessman we've ever had. | |
| And as a businessman, he will not tolerate the Chinese manipulating him into a position of weakness or having to force him or America to rescind certain points. | |
| Let me go back to the famous Chinese scholar philosopher Sun Tzu, who said that all wars and all negotiations begin in the mind and end in the mind. |
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