‘The greatest—and perhaps only—foreign policy accomplishment of the Trump administration has been the development of a coherent and genuinely bipartisan policy toward Xi Jinping ’s China…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) George Soros, one of the most reviled villains on the political Left, offered surprise praise to President Donald Trump for his handling of the ongoing trade war with China.
Soros is said to have doubled-down heavily on the Chinese yuan prior to the 2008 crash that ushered in a recession in the U.S. and other Western countries, to the benefit of the Asian market.
But he has since encouraged a hard-line approach to dealing with China and seems to have welcomed Trump’s calls to divest in its rival industries.
“The greatest—and perhaps only—foreign policy accomplishment of the Trump administration has been the development of a coherent and genuinely bipartisan policy toward Xi Jinping ’s China,” Soros began in an op-ed piece published Monday by the Wall Street Journal.
Nonetheless, the billionaire financier—whose so-called philanthropic ventures are heavily invested in open borders and many subversive efforts to disrupt America’s democratic process—said he feared Trump may cave in negotiations by offering concessions to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
“It’s hard to know exactly what’s motivating Mr. Trump,” Soros said, “but he appears desperate for a deal with President Xi to bolster the U.S. stock market and economy to improve his chances at re-election—putting his electoral interests ahead of America’s interests.”
Huawei is currently on the Commerce Department’s “entity list,” which labels it a “national security threat” and prevents U.S. companies from engaging in business with it, CNBC reported.
Soros called on readers to support Republican-led efforts in Congress that would block the company’s removal from the entity list.
“If Republicans allow Mr. Trump to bail out the Communist Party-run telecom giant, they will be abdicating their most basic democratic responsibilities,” he said.
Huawei—along with another sanctioned Chinese company, ZTE—has been a key player in the race to develop the 5G radio network that will replace existing cell-phone and Internet technology over the next few years, rendering old 4G devices obsolete.
Many fear that its technology could surreptitiously aid the Chinese government with spying.
The Justice Department previously filed charges accusing Huawei of corporate espionage and fraudulent trade practices.
Additionally, it may be “a dangerous rival in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Soros said.
However, the ban on doing business with American companies has given it a disadvantage by blocking crucial access to developing technologies, he added.
“[F]or now it still depends on about 30 U.S. companies to supply Huawei with the core components it needs to compete in the 5G market,” Soros said.
Soros admitted that he, too, had his own business interests in mind by wanting to limit China’s competitive advantage because his “open societies” agenda ran counter to the country’s more totalitarian policies, such as a social-credit system that may restrict travel.
Of course, the 89-year-old plutocrat likely has a considerable financial stake tied to the Asian markets, as well.
In 2011, he wrote that China’s decision to devalue the yuan—generally giving it a competitive edge over U.S. rivals—could also spike inflation in the country, just as it was beginning to surpass Western economies.
China recently announced a plan to do the same as it sought to undermine U.S. tariffs on its products.
That could signal that Soros needs the U.S. to win the trade war in order to protect his investments.
More likely, though, is that he stands to gain the most by having everybody lose.
A sustained trade war between the two economic forces would risk triggering another unstable market that would leave him well positioned both politically and economically.
“The reality is that we are in a Cold War that threatens to turn into a hot one,” Soros said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last January.
“On the other hand, if Xi and Trump were no longer in power, an opportunity would present itself to develop greater cooperation between the two cybersuperpowers,” he added.