Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is warning that the international order is breaking as “China seeks to remake the world in its own image.”
Hawley is set to make his case against China in a speech Wednesday on the Senate floor. The speech was shared with Axios in advance.
The website noted the Hawley is often discussed as a 2024 presidential possibility. And it said he’s betting that President Donald Trump’s hawkishness on China and populist nationalism will be the future of the Republican Party.
In his speech, Hawley will also argue the existing international order must redrawn to avoid a future in which the United States takes “second place to the imperialists in Beijing,” Axios said.
He adds: “Are we in this nation willing to witness the slow destruction of the free world? Are we willing to watch our own way of life, our own liberties and livelihoods, grow dependent on the policy of Beijing?
“Now we must recognize that the economic system designed by Western policy makers at the end of the Cold War does not serve our purposes in this new era."
Earlier this month, Hawley called for an end to the World Trade Organization.
“The coronavirus emergency is not only a public health crisis,” he had explained. “With 30 million Americans unemployed, it is also an economic crisis. And it has exposed a hard truth about the modern global economy: it weakens American workers and has empowered China’s rise. That must change.”