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…
"THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all very much for that very warm welcome. And on behalf of the President of the United States and the First Family: Welcome to the White House. (Applause.)
And join me in thanking an extraordinary leader. I just — as soon as I heard her voice, I had to jump out from behind the curtain. (Laughter.) She is not only the 18th Secretary of Transportation, but frankly, she is one of the most distinguished public servants in the United…
*This interview was originally conducted on December 16, 2019.
"Jim Dao: You campaigned on your ability to handle a crisis. If China were to send troops and tanks into Hong Kong to violently crack down on peaceful protesters, how would you handle that?
Well, that’s a very, I’m not sure I should answer it on ——
JD: Why not?
Let me put it this way. First of all, the first thing I’d do is go to the United Nations. I would introduce resolutions to condemn…
*This interview was recorded earlier but the transcript does not give a specific date.
"KK: Assume that for a moment that the Chinese government makes a decision that they’re going to flood the streets with troops in order to crack down on the protests that are happening in Hong Kong. What would you do? How would you respond as president?
Well, the message would need to go to China, that if they’re going to perpetrate a repeat of Tiananmen, that that will lead to them…
"PRESIDENT TRUMP: I thought that we would do it the way other; that the more I thought about this, the better it is. It’s — you can get your arms around it better the way we’ve got it. I like it better the way we’ve done it.
I just want to say this is a great day for both China and the United States. This is an agreement that people have been talking about for 40 years and never were able to get even a…
*This interview originally took place on December 10, 2019*
"Serge Schmemann: Senator, can I ask you about China? [...]
SS: About China. The Chinese have been repressing fairly ruthlessly.
With the Uighurs.
SS: The Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. Can or should the United States take action on their behalf?
I think the United States should be standing up much taller on this front, both with Hong Kong, and you see Congress acted on that front with authorizing some sanctions and passing a law which the…
*This interview oringally took place on December 4, 2019, before Andrew Yang failed to qualify for the January 14, 2020 debate.
James Dao: Can I pose a future hypothetical? If the Chinese government were to flood Hong Kong with military troops after you were president and impose a violent crackdown, similar to, say, Tiananmen Square in 1989, what would you do?
I have family in Hong Kong. I spent a semester there in college, and so when I see those streets wracked with riots and…
*This interview originally took place on December 4, 2019*
"James Dao: Moving from Europe to Asia, if China were to send troops, massive numbers of troops into Hong Kong, and impose a violent crackdown there similar to Tiananmen Square in 1989, what would you do as president? [...]You know, this is a hard hypothetical to take on until you actually know what’s happening. Again, you’ve got to back this one up on where we should have started. When the unrest first started unfolding in Hong Kong…
*This interview originally took place on December 2, 2019*
"AK: The president shares a lot of your concerns about our economic relationship with China and the other ——
No, the president does not, not quite. I mean, I know his rhetoric. I look at the world very differently than Mr. Trump does, but go ahead.
AK: [LAUGHS] I’m wondering if you could explain how your approach to dealing with China would be different from the president and how it would elicit better outcomes.
China is one…
"Q Mr. President, you mentioned the Chinese trade deal that you’re working on; you’re going to be signing, next week, phase one. Can you give us a sense of phase two —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q — what you hope to accomplish there? And will you be travelling to Beijing for that?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, phase one is a big, big number. It’s a big percentage of the deal. Some would say half, some would say a little less, or a little more than half…
"Q Mr. President, can you — what is your message tonight for — what is your message tonight for North Korea?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’ll see. I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un. I know he’s sending out certain messages about Christmas presents, and I hope his Christmas present is a beautiful vase. That’s what I’d like — a vase —
Q Do you think it will be, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: — as opposed to something else. I don’t know. I —…
"We have our great deal with China. China has already started to buy, with the farmers and with the manufacturers. Tremendous amounts of money are being spent back in the United States. And the farmers are happy. They had to put up with a lot, but we took care of them out of the subsidies that we were getting out of the tariffs that we were getting. But China is now buying very big in the farm belt and in the manufacturing belt also. They’re…
"We have — the China deal, as you know, it was just approved a little while ago. And it’s — to me, it’s not complicated, but that’s what I do. It’s a phenomenal deal. The tariffs will largely remain at 25 percent on $250 billion. And we’ll use them for future negotiations on the phase two deal, because China would like to see the tariffs off, and we — we’re okay with that. But they’ll be used as a negotiating table for the phase two…
"United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper raising concerns about the national security risks posed by U.S. reliance on foreign-manufactured pharmaceutical products. The senators' letter follows the publication of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 2019 Annual Report that highlights the nation's "growing reliance" on products critical to the manufacturing of drugs, which are primarily made in China.
In recent years, China has…
"Q Mr. President, how do you plan on reengaging North Korea in the negotiations?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’ll see about North Korea. I’d be surprised if North Korea acted hostiley [sic]. I have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un. I think we both want to keep it that way. He knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that. But we’ll have to see.
He’s somebody that I’ve gotten along with very well for three years…
"Q Could I ask you about NATO? Why is China such an important subject for this NATO Summit? What threat do they pose?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, China has become very powerful and much more so than in the past. They’ve done it, largely, with United States money, because our past Presidents allowed them to steal the cookie cutter. And that’s okay — I don’t begrudge China for that. I begrudge — I’m very disappointed in our past Presidents and leadership. They allowed this to happen…
"PRESIDENT TRUMP: And with trade, I have all the cards. We’ve built a — we have built something in the last three years that’s been incredible. You’ve seen it. We’re up $21 trillion, and China is down about $32 trillion.
And as you know, for years, I’ve been hearing that it was “2019.” “In 2019, China’s going to become the largest economy.” Well, that didn’t happen. We’re much larger than China now, because we’ve gone up and they’ve gone down. And they’ve had their worst…
"On behalf of the American people, Melania and I offer our deepest condolences to the people of Japan and to the loved ones of former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. We were saddened to learn of his passing in Tokyo on Friday.
Prime Minister Nakasone was, in the words of President Ronald Reagan, “a friend, a wise colleague, and the leader of America’s most important partner and ally in the Pacific.” The former Prime Minister’s efforts to strengthen the United States-Japan alliance and his commitment to…
"Today, I have signed into law S. 1838, the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019” (the “Act”). The Act reaffirms and amends the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, specifies United States policy towards Hong Kong, and directs assessment of the political developments in Hong Kong. Certain provisions of the Act would interfere with the exercise of the President’s constitutional authority to state the foreign policy of the United States. My Administration will treat each of the provisions of the…