Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s threat to get tough with China about its trade practices increases the odds that China-bashing will permeate a presidential contest to woo US voters seeking a culprit for the nation’s economic malaise.
Pledging this week that he would label China a currency manipulator, Romney sought both to outline differences with US President Barack Obama and to tap into the US public’s rising concern over China’s economic and military growth.
Romney’s critique, while not shared by all Republican candidates, appears to reflect a growing willingness by some in a party traditionally devoted to free trade to take on China over trade and currency issues.
“Candidates are out there listening to voters, who are talking about these issues and they know that we are getting our lunch eaten by China,” said Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, which has a major stake in trade with China.
Paul said a poll the group conducted in July showed that Republicans were as strong as Democrats in supporting more assertive US trade policies toward China.
Romney promised on Tuesday that one of his initial executive orders on his first day as president would be to “clamp down on the cheaters” by slapping duties on Chinese imports if Beijing does not move quickly to float its currency.
“I will label China as it is, a currency manipulator, and I will go after them for stealing our intellectual property,” he said while unveiling his plan to revive the troubled US economy and create jobs.
Romney’s pledge prompted a sharp rebuttal on Wednesday from rival candidate Jon Huntsman, who was Obama’s ambassador to Beijing and said his rival “doesn’t get” the complex Sino-American relationship.
“Mitt, now is not the time in a recession to enter a trade war,” Huntsman said during a Republican presidential debate. “He doesn’t get the part that what will fix the US-China relationship, realistically, is fixing our core right here at home, because our core is weak, and it is broken, and we have no leverage at the negotiating table.”
Polls show Huntsman trailing well behind Romney, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.
While China’s growing role in the US economy has brought it greater attention in US politics, “presidential campaigns don’t usually lend themselves to intelligent, thoughtful discussion,” said a China trade consultant, who requested anonymity.
Comments like Romney’s “are generally cost-free at this stage of the race, but they underscore that there are constituencies on both sides of the aisle that feel that China is getting away with far too much by virtue of a range of mercantilist policies,” the consultant said.
Beijing has not issued any public response to Romney’s broadside. In the past, it has tended to dismiss such criticism as politically motivated.
Until Romney took aim at Beijing, China lurked in the background of the Republican campaign, in conservative attacks on Vice President Joe Biden’s seemingly empathetic remarks about China’s one-child policy last month, or as an issue for Huntsman because he spent two years as Obama’s ambassador in Beijing.
One obscure Republican candidate, Buddy Roemer, gave a speech on jobs in front of China’s embassy in Washington, quipping that Obama’s worker retraining program should teach Mandarin because that is where US jobs have gone.
However, if Romney’s point — that China suppresses the value of its currency, the yuan, to keep its exports artificially cheap — sounds familiar, that is because Obama and his rivals were making that argument in the 2007-2008 Democratic primary race.
China’s expanding economy and growing global clout, its rapidly growing military which this year unveiled both a stealth fighter jet and an aircraft carrier, and its human rights record all cause anxiety for American voters, polls show.
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