The Trump administration is right to launch a trade war with China because America's dependence on Chinese goods and China's trade advantage is a "very serious matter," Pat Buchanan told Newsmax TV.
Buchanan, who worked in the Nixon and Reagan administrations, was on Tuesday's "Howie Carr Show" to talk trade, about which he also wrote an opinion piece.
"You're talking about a very serious matter, and I think you do not give advantages to a regime like that, frankly," Buchanan said. "And you ought to ask yourself what you're doing when you allow the Chinese to run a $400 billion trade surplus every year at our expense."
After several months of negotiations, China failed to meet a deadline last week, which forced President Donald Trump to order tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. China has responded with tariffs on U.S.-made goods.
Buchanan, a three-time presidential candidate, said the issue should have never happened.
"We should never have gotten this deeply into this relationship with China. It goes all the way back to the 1990s and the Republican Party's very much responsible for providing MFV — Most Favored Nation treatment — for China," he said. "Bringing China into the WTO, they all celebrated."
Buchanan noted China is in the midst of its massive belt and road project, which will grow China's reach to an even larger scale than it is now.
"What [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer realizes now is you're not dealing with a normal trade partner," Buchanan said. "These folks feed your technology when your companies come in there, they have forced transfers of technology from American companies, they reduce the value of their currency in order to dump in the United States and run up trade surpluses with Americans, and they're using this to build their road and belt project to basically expand Chinese power and influence worldwide.
"My fear . . . is we're going into this new world order where we're all 'interdependent.' Is that a good thing? Because the Founding Fathers didn't believe that, given their experience. They thought we should depend on one another and depend on ourselves."
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