Economist Peter Schiff pushed back against the Minister of Finance Scott Bessent comments on US-China trade, saying Beijing’s decision to reduce its dependence on US markets will strengthen its economy, not weaken it.
Bessent ‘Has it backwards’
On Wednesday, Schiff said in a post on
“Selling to customers who can actually afford to pay is a better business than selling to customers who cannot,” he said, referring to the growing U.S. federal debt, interest payments to service those debts, in addition to the weakening dollar, all of which Schiff has highlighted several times in the past.
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In a subsequent post, Schiff said: “The way you actually pay for imports is exports. We don’t make enough stuff [that] the Chinese need. Other countries do that.”
Schiff responds to Bessent’s comments on U.S.-China trade talks during CNBC’s “Invest In America” forum on Wednesday. Bessent said: “The Chinese are trying to fill the narrative, you know, by saying, the US did A, B and C, therefore we had to do D. And that’s not true.”
He added: “This is China versus the world. It’s not an issue between the US and China,” calling the country’s latest decision to impose export controls on its rare earths a “sign of decoupling” with the United States.
Chinese exports are rising despite the US deficit
On Monday, Jim Kramerthe host of CNBC’s Mad Money, expressed concern about the president Donald Trump’s the tariffs backfired because the Chinese “learn to live without us” on his show.
Cramer also highlighted recent trade statistics, noting that “China’s total exports to destinations other than the United States grew by nearly 15%, while their exports to the U.S. fell by 27%.” Despite the shortage in the US market, “total exports increased by 8% in September.”
Economist Paul Krugman echoed similar concerns early this week, saying that “America is more vulnerable to a rupture than China” as “the US economy is dependent on China for crucial inputs, especially those rare earths.” China, on the other hand, can “stimulate domestic demand” to blunt the impact of lost exports, he said.
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