Joe Biden Is Convinced a Pro-China-Trade Stance Is a Winner

“Trump’s erratic and impulsive approach to China is causing families economic pain,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told Politico. “Joe Biden would rally our friends and allies to hold China accountable.”

Joe Biden’s position on China as described by his campaign sounds a little different than the way he’s expressed it in the past month. Biden’s full quote from his May 1 remarks in Iowa:

China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west. They can’t figure out how they are going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”

It would be easier to dismiss that as a sloppy off-the-cuff comment if he hadn’t said again in New Hampshire, May 13:

“What are we doing? We’re walking around with our heads down, ‘Woe is me.’ No other nation can catch us, including China. I got criticized for saying that. I’ve spent as much time with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping as any world leader has.”