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…
"MR. COSTA: You brought up China. If you were elected, would you keep the tariffs on China?
SEN. SANDERS: No. If I were elected, we'd sit down and try to develop trade policies that work for the working people of this country and poor people around the world.
It is no secret--and I say this as somebody who helped lead the effort against NAFTA, PNTR with China, and other trade agreements--that these trade agreements were most often written behind closed doors by corporate leaders. And…
"You read yesterday where China is down very substantially. They’re having the worst year they’ve had in 27 years. I don’t want to have them have bad years. But we made a deal and they broke the deal on me. The deal was done. It was practically done. It was just like a very short period of time, we would’ve had it finished. And they broke the deal. They decided they didn’t want to do the things that they had agreed to. So I said…
"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…
"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…
"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 — 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…