Two years ago, the premise behind President Trump’s tough economic stance on China, including tariffs, drew mockery from then-candidate Joe Biden.
“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!” Biden said at a rally.
On Thursday, however, President Biden borrowed the same metaphor but flipped the script.
After speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time since becoming president, Biden warned that the communist nation will “eat our lunch,” the Fox Business Network reported
“Last night I was on the phone with for two straight hours with Xi Jinping,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office. “It was a good conversation, I know him well, we spent a lot of time together over the years I was vice president, but if we don’t get moving, they’re going to eat our lunch.”
Biden said China has “major, major new initiatives on rail, they already have rail that goes 325 miles per hour with ease.”
“They are working very hard to do what I think we’re gonna have to do,” he said.
China, Biden continued, is “working very hard to try to move in a position where they end up being the source of a new way in which to power automobiles, which they’re going to invest a lot of money.”
“They’re investing billions of dollars in dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation and the environment … so we just have to step up,” he said.
After the November election, as WND reported, a Beijing university professor cited the Biden family’s Chinese business deals as he explained in a lecture why a Biden administration would restore the communist regime’s influence on its “old friends” on Wall Street and inside the Beltway after it was throttled by President Trump.
The professor, Di Dongsheng of Renmin University, referenced Hunter Biden’s many foreign business deals, including in China, where his vice president father directed U.S. policy. And he indicated they are of value in Beijing’s relationship with Biden.
Two years ago
In 2019, when he mocked Trump’s tough stance on China, Biden charged that Trump “has done nothing but increase the tariffs, the debt and the trade deficit.”
“The way we have to proceed is we have to have our allies with us. It’s not just us. We have to keep the world together,” Biden said at the time.
In a statement Wednesday night, the White House said Biden “affirmed his priorities of protecting the American people’s security, prosperity, health and way of life, and preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
“President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan.”
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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.