Asia Matters for America
America Matters for Asia
Explore US-Asia National and Local Connections
An initiative of the East-West Center and Asia Matters for America partners and stakeholders
The 2020 Presidential Candidates on the Indo-Pacific resource highlighted mentions of Indo-Pacific issues by US presidential candidates and nominees in speeches, campaign documents, and debates.
To view statements by President Trump prior to his June 18, 2019 declaration to seek a second term, as well as members of his Cabinet, visit The Trump Administration & US - Indo-Pacific Relations.
"Democrats will take aggressive action against China or any other country that tries to undercut American manufacturing by manipulating their currencies and maintaining a misaligned exchange rate with the dollar, dumping products like steel and aluminum in our markets, or providing unfair subsidies. Unlike President Trump, we will stand up to efforts from China and other state actors to steal America’s intellectual property and will demand China and other countries cease and desist from conducting cyber espionage against our companies. And we will take immediate…
"U.S. Leadership in the Asian Pacific
We are a Pacific nation with economic, military, and cultural ties to all the countries of the oceanic rim and treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand. With them, we look toward the establishment of human rights for the people of North Korea. We urge the government of China to recognize the inevitability of change in the Kim family's slave state and, for everyone's safety against nuclear disaster, to hasten positive change on the Korean…
“Mike Pence: (32:06): They have a $2 trillion version of the Green New Deal, Susan, that your newspaper, USA Today, said really wasn’t that very different from the original Green New Deal. More taxes, more regulation, banning fracking, abolishing fossil fuel, crushing American energy and economic surrender to China is a prescription for economic decline. President Trump and I will keep America growing, the V-shape recovery that’s underway right now will continue with four more years of President Donald Trump [crosstalk 00:32:37] […]
Kamala Harris…
"Kristen Welker: (09:22)I do want to ask you, Vice-President Biden, about China. Let’s talk about China more broadly. There have, of course, President Trump has said that they should pay for not being fully transparent in regards to the coronavirus. If you were president, would you make China pay? And please be specific, what would that look like?
Joe Biden: (09:41)What I’d make China do is play by the international rules, not like he has done. He has caused the deficit of the…
"Previous administrations allowed foreign countries to steal our jobs and plunder our wealth. They stole our wealth. They stole so much, and it was allowed to go on so long. But it’s not going on any longer. You take a look at what’s happening. Look at today’s front page in the Wall Street Journal. You’ll see where China has had its worst year in 27 years. And I’m not looking for that. But we had a deal with China, and they decided not to make…
"I, for a while, have said that the thing that’s going to bring us together is great success. Now we have tremendous success — greater than we’ve ever had before. I mean, our country picked up trillions of dollars in value and worth. China has gone down trillions of dollars. The tariffs have hurt them. I don’t want to hurt them, but I want to give us a fair playing field. But China has gone down trillions. We’ve gone up tril- — not billions, trillions…
"For years, politicians let China take the crown jewels out of our country. My administration has taken the toughest-ever stance to stop these incredible abuses. [...]
And I didn’t blame China. I didn’t blame all of these countries — Mexico. Mexico, they took 30 percent of our automobile business. I don’t know if you know that or not. They have plants the likes of which you’ve never seen before. They took 30 percent — probably more than that — of our automobile — I don’t blame…
"Q Democrats are portraying your action yesterday on the census citizenship question as backing down. Do you believe that you backed down?
THE PRESIDENT: No, no. Who said — who said that?
Q Democrats are saying you backed down. Do you believe you backed down?
THE PRESIDENT: Look, anything you do, the Democrats will say it’s not good. In the meantime, they had a disaster. They had these laws that are so bad — catch-and-release, and you look at the different laws — visa lottery…
"Q — please allow me to ask questions not related, but I think if you would think it’s important as a man of faith. You understand that a lot of the — in China, this year marks the 20 years’ anniversary of the Chinese government’s persecution of Falun Gong — the spiritual movement. And even people here — I just met some people — they are here now, but they still affected by Chinese government’s persecution policy, which has extended to here.
So at this…
"Washington, DC – United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) today joined Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and 17 Senate colleagues in calling on the U.S. Census Bureau to include Khmer, Hmong, and Lao among the languages supported by the Internet Self-Response (ISR) and Census Questionnaire Assistance (CQA) options for the 2020 Census. While current Census data “identifies the number of limited-English-proficient households,” it “does not capture the range of needs that they have,” the senators write. “We need to do everything we can to make…
"Q (Inaudible) this week on China — Ambassador Lighthizer and Secretary Mnuchin, I guess, would they meet with the Chinese this week?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’re doing very well with China. That’s right; they’re meeting. But we’re — most importantly, we’re doing very well with the tariffs. We’re taking in billions and billions of dollars from China. We’ve never taken in ten cents from China. China has ripped us off during Obama and Biden; during, in all fairness, Bush and other Presidents; and Clinton, obviously.
…"Q Joe Biden called you a “bully” in that interview last night. What do you think of that?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think I’m bully at all. I just don’t like taking — being taken advantage of by other countries, by pharmaceutical companies, by all of the people that have taken advantage of this country.
You look at what Joe Biden has done with China. We’ve lost our shirts with China and now China is dying to make a deal. So — and we’re taking…
"Q Any reaction to the protests in Hong Kong today?
THE PRESIDENT: In Hong Kong? I just hope it gets solved. I was with President Xi of China. We had a great talk, a great discussion. We’re talking about doing something. And we’ve talked about it briefly, but that’s very sad. I’ve rarely seen a protest like that. It’s very sad to see. [...]
Q Mr. President, when will the round of trade talks with China begin, after your agreement over the weekend?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s…
"PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you. (Applause.) Wow, thank you very much. Please. Thank you very much. That’s so nice. That means you like us. And we like you. And it has been a great period of time for our two countries.
I want to thank you, Ambassador Harris. We put you here recently because we thought it might be a spot where we need somebody with great talent, and you’ve displayed that in our military for many years. We really appreciate it very much. Thank you…
"MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION. We are now joined by 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke who joins- joins us from El Paso. Congressman, we've had this breaking news overnight and I'm wondering if, as president, you would continue the diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, and would you accept North Korea as a contained nuclear threat if it refuses to give up its nuclear weapons?
BETO O'ROURKE: You know, I would continue diplomacy contingent on progress that keeps this country and…
"[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] I just had a meeting with the business leaders of South Korea. And these are not only business leaders here, they’re business leaders throughout the world. They are among the greatest businesspeople anywhere in the world. We went through a lot — Lotte, Samsung — so many that are so — Hyundai — so many that are so respected.
And we talked and we had a fairly short meeting, unfortunately. I wish it could have been longer. But these are very, very highly…
"PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I want to thank you, Chairman. You hear the power of that voice. Nobody has heard that voice before. He doesn’t do news conferences, in case you haven’t heard. And this was a special moment. This is, I think, really — as President Moon said, this is a historic moment, the fact that we’re meeting.
And I want to thank Chairman Kim for something else. When I put out the social media notification, if he didn’t show up, the press was going…
"MARGARET BRENNAN: We saw this historic moment with President Trump stepping into North Korea. And I wonder, if you're commander in chief, would you continue the diplomacy that he has started?
SEN. KLOBUCHAR: You always have to talk to everyone when it is American security and the world's security at stake. But he keeps having these summits and meetings that really don't produce anything. There's been a number of them now, and this time, you know, you just can't look at this as going…
"PRESIDENT TRUMP: I just want to say that this is my honor. I didn’t really expect it. We were in Japan for the G20. We came over and I said, “Hey, I’m over here. I want to call up Chairman Kim.” And we got to meet. And stepping across that line was a great honor. A lot of progress has been made. A lot of friendships have been made. And this has been in particular a great friendship. So I just want to thank you…