Nikki Haley threw down the gauntlet on Donald Trump's posture toward China Tuesday, criticizing the former President's "moral weakness" in the face of what she described as the greatest foreign adversary the United States had faced since World War II.
Speaking at an event by the Washington D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and current Republican candidate for president railed against the former administration's posture toward the country, particularly in regard to an instance in which Trump congratulated Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the 70th anniversary of the country's communist regime.
While Trump was correct about the trade imbalances between the U.S. and China laid bare in his administration's aggressive trade policies, Haley said, the trade deal he signed "came up short" when China predictably failed to live up to its commitments, while other areas of Trump's China policy fell well short of what it should have been.
The former president "did too little about the rest of the Chinese threat," she said, failing to stall the flow of American technology and investments into China and its military. He also failed to effectively rally America's allies against the alleged Chinese threat, and "showed moral weakness" in his zeal to befriend President Xi, allowing them to grow their military presence in the South Pacific and failing to appropriately challenge them on the world stage.
"Trump congratulated the Communist Party on its 70th anniversary of conquering China," Haley said in her remarks. "That sent a wrong message to the world. Chinese communism must be condemned, never congratulated. China was militarily stronger when President Trump left office than when he entered. That's bad."
Newsweek has reached out to Trump's campaign via email for comment.
Haley, who served a term-and-a-half as South Carolina's governor before Trump appointed her ambassador, made the remarks as part of a larger rollout of her prospective administration's China policy, which seeks to take a more hawkish approach to the country than either Trump or current President Joe Biden, whose administration recently sent a delegation to China to help soothe tensions between the two nations.
"The list of President Biden's failures in China is long," Haley claimed. "He has refused to seriously investigate China's cover-up of COVID origins. He has done little to stop the expansion of China's footprint on our homeland. He has failed to address China's major role in the Fentanyl crisis. He has weakened our own military. His obsessive focus on climate issues naively plays into China's negotiating hand and the situation is getting worse. Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken's visit last week was a gold-plated invitation for more Chinese aggression, not less."
Haley said the only logical response to China was one of aggressive investment and sanctions intended to dissuade China from additional military investments and rob them of capital.
In addition to maintaining a stronger military presence in the South Pacific as a bulwark to the country's aggressive position toward Taiwan, Haley suggested imposing stronger sanctions on China over its alleged role in covering up the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as its ties to the U.S. fentanyl epidemic, including the use of drastic reductions in U.S. trade.
"As President, I will push Congress to revoke permanent normal trade relations until the flow of fentanyl ends," Haley said. "If China wants to start normal trade again, it will stop killing Americans."
Haley also called for limits on Chinese land purchases in the U.S. as well as a slowing of investment into U.S. businesses and institutions of higher learning, all of which she claimed only serve to siphon dollars and technology into China's military as it prepares for potential conflict.
"The Communist Party's endgame is clear," Haley claimed. "China is preparing its people for war. President Xi has openly said it. We should take him at his word and act accordingly. Instead, President Biden continues to dither. His action makes conflict more likely. We must act now to keep the peace and prevent war."
