not clear that the trump administration has a coherent strategy for getting to a positive ending with china. so what do you think china s next move is? do you think we re going to get any sort of deal before 2020? especially if you factor in the conflict going on there. i think it s looking less and less likely. look, their strategy on china was always a big gamble from the start. instead of sort of trying to build a coalition of free market democracies to build stronger trade rules and press china in the right direction, instead of joining tpp and doing those kinds of things, we did the exact opposite. we actually sort of fought some mini trade wars with our best allies while at the same time fighting a unilateral action against china on the theory that if we piled tariffs on china high enough, they would eventually capitulate and do what we want. i think that now it s pretty clear that that strategy is not
calls between members of the trump administration and top senators from both parties. but the question remains if any of that talk will actually lead to legislation. at the gun safety forum in iowa over the weekend, 2020 contender senator kirsten gillibrand said it will take a whole lot of pressure, not just from lawmakers, but from voters across the nation. if every one of you spends the next four weeks speaking out, using social media to be heard, tweeting at mitch mcconnell saying, mitch, call the vote, mitch, call the vote, he could call us back into congress today. we could pass universal background checks today. we could ban assault weapons, we could ban large magazines, we could have a federal anti-trafficking law today. new york senator and democratic presidential candidate kirsten gillibrand joins me now. senator, welcome. i want to get to guns in just a moment, but i have to ask. two weeks left to qualify for the third debate. what s your strategy to get there? well, be
volatile it is, yet it s the president who was blamed. this whole strategy is looking chaotic and incoherent, pretty directionless. the only americans that i can think of that could have been happy with this sort of on again-off again tariff action of the last several days are maybe the day traders, i don t know. it doesn t help our consumers, it doesn t help our farmers, it doesn t get us closer to a deal with china. and from the chinese point of view, they re looking at the trump administration s inconsistency. one of the things we re taught as trade negotiators is don t ever let the other side see that you re negotiating with yourself. i don t see that this brings us any closer to a deal with china can. i think they sit back and let trump negotiate with themselves for a period of time. i think that both sides are still very dug in on their positions, and, you know, it s
who kind of prides himself on throwing away all the accomplishments of his predecessors and in so doing is essentially saying we don t care about that. on the other hand, it s not as if he s kind of become friends with the chinese. you have to recall his entire east asia strategy the endopacific strategy is to encircle china and contain china, sort of a 1950s approach to the soviet union. so on the one hand, he said i don t care about human rights. on the other hand, he said i don t care about engaging china. and what he has tried to do is to create a circumstance everybody joins in this kind of cold war type effort against china. the problem is most countries in asia recognize the importance and the complexity of china and they would like to see a u.s. that is engaged rather than with these cartoon strokes. i want to share what commerce secretary wilbur ross said