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…
"Q Mr. President, so taking America into a recession: Is it worth it? And do Americans need to back that up?
THE PRESIDENT: So, the fake news, of which many of you are members, is trying to convince the public to have a recession. “Let’s have a recession.” The United States is doing phenomenally well.
But one thing I have to do is economically take on China because China has been ripping us off for many years. President Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama, and…
"Q Mr. President, you keep insisting that your trade war with China — the trade war with China is not affecting the U.S. economy. But a lot of economists disagree with that. And they worry that if China goes into a recession, they’ll pull us down with it.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well — well, okay. Let me — let me tell you something. Number one, we’re doing very well as an economy. But somebody had to take China on. You know, I read and I see…
"Seventeen years ago, America agreed to give Beijing open access to our economy: We brought China into the World Trade Organization.
Previous administrations, of one party and another, made the choice in the hope that freedom in China would expand in all of its forms if we opened our markets to them, and I’m not talking about just economically, but also politically — with a newfound respect for classical liberal principles, the rule of law, private property, personal liberty, and religious freedom. We hoped to…
"MARGARET BRENNAN: How would you compete with China?
YANG: Well, certainly the tariffs and the trade war are the wrong way to go. We're now entering a very dangerous phase of potentially competitive devaluations. I was just in Iowa last week and the farmers and producers there are losing business there- they feel betrayed by President Trump. We need to curb some of the abuses on the Chinese side. But the trade war is leading the global economy in the wrong direction.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So…
"THE PRESIDENT: [...] China is eating the tariffs because of monetary manipulation. And also, they’re pouring a lot of money into their country because they don’t want to lose jobs. They’re losing, as you probably know, because you reported it, but they lost over 2 million jobs in a short period of time. And they want to make a deal; we’ll see what happens. But they definitely want to make a deal.
I’d like to see Hong Kong worked out in a very humanitarian fashion…
"Q What actions are you prepared to take to avoid a recession if this yield curve thing is really predictive?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we’re going to have a very long period of wealth and success. Other countries are doing very poorly. As you know, China is doing very, very poorly. The tariffs have really bitten into China. They haven’t bitten into us at all — except for the reporters that want to make it look that way, but they don’t understand what’s happening.
…"THE PRESIDENT: The stock market continues to do very well. We have very, very strong numbers. We have a lot of artificial numbers from other countries because they’re all devaluing their currencies. They’re really doing things that aren’t very good for their countries, in my opinion. But, short term, it’s very good for their countries. Long term, possibly not.
And we’re not following suit. We have a Fed that decides not to cut interest rates, which is a very bad thing. Because, right now, we…
"Pennsylvania Steel raised the skyscrapers that built our cities. And, by the way, steel — steel was dead. Your business was dead. Okay? I don’t want to be overly crude. Your business was dead. And I put a little thing called “a 25 percent tariff” on all of the dumped steel all over the country. And now your business is thriving. Probably there’s few businesses that have gone proportionately up like steel and aluminum.We did it with aluminum, too. But they are doing well —…
"THE PRESIDENT: So, we’re doing very well with China. We’re talking to China. We’re not ready to make a deal, but we’ll see what happens. But, you know, we’ve been hurt by China for 25, 30 years. Nobody has done anything about it. And we have no choice but to do what we’re doing.
It’s working out very well, as you know. We called them on manipulation and they brought their numbers back, and they brought them back rapidly. And they were able to do…
"Q (Inaudible.) South Korea and Japan exports are (inaudible.)
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. South Korea and I have made a deal. They’ve agreed to pay a lot more money toward the United States. As you know, we’ve got 32,000 soldiers on South Korean soil, and we’ve been helping them for about 82 years. And we get nothing. We get virtually nothing. And South Korea and I have made a deal where they’re paying a lot more money, and they’re going to pay a lot more money…
"MR. FARRIS: You recently spoke at the extraordinary event sponsored by Secretary Pompeo, the Ministerial on International Religious Freedom. And I know this has been an important issue for you for many years. Can you tell us what you think the state of the world is on religious freedom — not just for Christians, but for people of all faith?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, first, let me again say how grateful I am that President Trump has made religious liberty around the world a priority…
"Vice President Pence met today with several champions of religious freedom. Joined by Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, the Vice President reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to stand with people of every faith in every country around the world, including in the People’s Republic of China where the administration will continue to call upon Beijing to respect the rights enshrined in China’s constitution to allow Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian believers throughout the country the freedom to practice their faiths."