US President Donald Trump’s claims about America’s trade ties with China during his third State of the Union speech on Tuesday were mostly false and political rhetoric, says an academic and political analyst in California.
“In his State of the Union address US President Trump once again put lipstick on a pig,” said Dennis Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California.
“Trump is notorious for spinning narratives that are far from the truth to generate his own alternate reality,” Etler said in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday.
“Trump is not interested in stating the truth. He lies through his teeth and calls black white on a continual basis,” he added. “What he says is so much political rhetoric to try and convince his base that the trade war which devastated the farm belt and saddled the nation and its workers with added debt was somehow a victory.”
“While Trump spins tales to justify his actions, more and more people are recognizing that he is an emperor with no clothes.”
The US and China signed the so-called “phase one” trade deal on January 15, which Beijing agreed to increase its purchases of agricultural, manufacturing and energy products from the US in exchange for the reduction of punitive tariffs on Chinese products.
Trump said in his address that the strategy to impose tariffs to “confront China’s theft of American jobs” had worked, but that he had developed an improved relationship with China, including with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In reality, the tech war between the two countries has continued to escalate.
Senior officials in the Trump administration plan to meet this month to discuss further curbing technology exports to Huawei and other Chinese companies, and to coordinate the broader US war with China over technological dominance.
Beijing was also unhappy that the US on Friday imposed travel bans on travelers from China following the coronavirus outbreak, saying Washington was creating and spreading fear.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/02/06/618053/US-Trump-China-speech-trade-war-Dennis-Etler