The economy is dead. Bashing China is still alive and kicking.
President Trump’s road map to re-election may have veered wildly because of the coronavirus but there’s still a supposed strategy in there somehow to beat Joe Biden — or whoever ends up with the Democratic nomination.
Robbed of his number one selling point — a robust national economy — Trump has decided that making China pay for the coronavirus will get him another term.
That somewhat dubious strategy was why the Trump administration on Monday put out Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger to speak at a conference about China and relations with the U.S.
Pottinger did not go full Trump or (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo — threatening to take new economic measures against China — but focused more on fostering a populist revolt in the communist nation. The former Wall Street Journal correspondent, fluent in Mandarin, urged China to embrace more free speech and have its citizens have a bigger say in the government.
Pottinger’s suggestions won’t go over well. He might as well have demanded China change its national flag from red to blue.
The reality is that the Chinese government wasn’t up front with what it knew of the coronavirus and didn’t act quickly enough to slow its spread.
But whether that’s a potent enough political idea to base your re-election on is questionable. Elections are won and lost on the economy and right now Trump is losing.
But Biden shouldn’t be willing to allow Trump to seize the issue for himself. Democrats need to understand that being China’s apologist won’t play well in middle America.
The former vice president should come out swinging himself, demanding an unflinching investigation of China’s role in the coronavirus crisis. That’s what Australia, Great Britain and Germany are doing, and what much of the world should be demanding. And the people of China, who suffered through the deadly pandemic and saw their economy crippled, should have a bigger voice in how their government is run.
But if anything, China seems to be digging in its heels. Any suggestion that the country is responsible for the coronavirus has been met with stiff resistance and threats.
China actually threatened to withhold medical aid and supplies to the Netherlands because the European country dared to change the name of its office in Taiwan to include the word Tapei.
Now Trump is leading an international effort to investigate the source of the coronavirus, and China is again fighting back. Except this time it may not work.
