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…
Joe Biden: "The United States should push back on China’s deepening authoritarianism, even as we seek to cooperate on issues where our interests are aligned. It is inspiring to see the brave people of Hong Kong demonstrating peacefully for the civil liberties and autonomy promised by Beijing. The world is watching; we should all stand in support of democratic principles and freedom.
The forced detention of over a million Uighur Muslims in western China is unconscionable. America should speak out against the internment camps in…
"THE PRESIDENT: So I just want to tell you the economy is doing fantastically well. We have people over in China right now. We’re negotiating with China. We’ll see what happens. We’re either going to make a great deal or we’re not going to make a deal at all. But a lot of great things are happening, and including with China. [...]
THE PRESIDENT: So the talks are moving very well with China, but they were often with China. But China always makes a new deal…
"Look, I look at deals that were done with other Presidents and this country, and it’s a disgrace that our country has allowed this to happen — where China, for years and years and years was making from $300 billion to $507 billion a year, okay? Now we’re taking in billions of dollars from China, and it’s all turning around.
Whether a deal is made — you know, they’re going next week; they have more meetings. Meeting after meeting. I don’t think, personally, China would…
"When the wealthiest economies claim developing-country status, they harm not only other developed economies but also economies that truly require special and differential treatment. Such disregard for adherence to WTO rules, including the likely disregard of any future rules, cannot continue to go unchecked.
China most dramatically illustrates the point. Since joining the WTO in 2001, China has continued to insist that it is a developing country and thus has the right to avail itself of flexibilities under any new WTO rules. The United States…
"The World — the World Trade Organization has been a horrible thing for us. That’s what built China. That, and the fact that our former Presidents did nothing about the fact that China was making hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And I guess they didn’t see it. I mean, 25 years, they didn’t see it. But we see it. And right now, they’re paying us billions and billions of dollars, folks. (Applause.) Billions. And they want to — they want to make a…
"We’re also standing up for the persecuted Rohingya people in Burma. While that conflict has fallen along ethnic lines, we cannot ignore the rise of militant Buddhism against Muslim and Christian minorities that’s taken place. A brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya has forced more than 700,000 to flee across the border to Bangladesh. And though the United States has repeatedly urged the Burmese government to hold accountable all those responsible, the government has continued to imprison and harass innocent men and women.
…