Posted on 04/08/2025 7:49:54 AM PDT by george76
What changed?
In 2005, Chuck Schumer passionately advocated for a 27.5 percent tariff on China, calling their trade policies unfair and saying it had to end.
He was saying the exact same thing Trump is saying now, but ultimately the Democrats under Obama and Biden did nothing about it.
Schumer urged that such a large tariff on Chinese goods “says to the Chinese that their unfair trade policies have got to end. The Chinese have enjoyed a huge trade surplus with the U.S. Every year it gets larger and larger.”
Schumer had joined forces with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to introduce a ‘China Free Trade Bill’
The rest of what Schumer said:
“Much of that trade surplus is because the Chinese don’t play fair. They don’t let our goods into their country. I can tell you company after company in New York who cannot sell goods in China or can only sell them under impossible conditions.”
“The Chinese make no effort to prevent the ripping off of our intellectual property. These are our crown jewels. The thinking. The great creativity. The great entrepreneurialness of the American business community is just taken, and they shrug their shoulders.”
“And worse of all, the Chinese pile on and add unfair rules that violate free trade. And at the top of that list is the fact that the Chinese peg their currency abnormally low, so their exports get a 27 precent advantage here in the U.S. and our imports get a 27 percent disadvantage when sold in China. Every tenet of free trade, if you believe in it, says they should not peg their currency.”
“What does this mean for America? It means a huge job loss. We have suffered dramatically in manufacturing jobs, service jobs, and other jobs. It means we have a huge trade deficit. It means the dollar sinks to abysmally low levels, threatening our wealth, and it creates chaos in the whole world trading system.”
...
“We are fed up, Mr. President. How can we stand by as millions of American workers lose their jobs? As thousands of American companies can’t compete fairly? As our country as a whole has wealth drained from it?”
“What we seek is fairness in trade. The Chinese do not play by the rules. We have talked and talked and talked to them. The time for action is now. If not now, when? If not us, who? Millions of American workers and thousands of American businesses look to us to set things right, and today, by passing the Schumer-Graham amendment, we can do that.”
Schumer didn’t follow through on his tough talk and during Trump’s first term he even criticised the President for not being harsh enough on China, urging “Based on his campaign rhetoric you’d think President Trump would be tougher as China steals our family jewels.”
Indeed, Democrats barely stopped talking about this subject. Here’s a coked up Joe Biden before the dementia kicked in:
And here’s Bernie Sanders in 2015 when he was an independent:
He was still saying this as recently as 2019:
Last week we highlighted how Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders all passionately advocated for heavy tariffs on China.
What changed?
As we noted earlier, President Trump is forging ahead with an additional 34 percent tariffs on Chinese goods and has threatened to add another 50 percent if China refuses to withdraw retaliatory tariffs of 34 percent on US goods.
He and other Democrats went silent as the Yuan denominated checks began to clear.
In 2018 when Trump imposed the 25% Section 301 tariffs on China, Schumer publicly congratulated Trump
I remember him specifically saying “Be strong, Mr. President!”
YEs, all of the NOW RICH Demos did this as a negotiating technique. Might have changed their tune when a check cleared but also when they got sweet investments in CCP-controlled companies — like all politicos in CaCaLand.
(What changed?)
DEMOCRATS Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi
are confirmed, habitual, inveterate liars
The bimbos and pretentious ‘men’ of the Washington Post will not read or quote from this story... Same with the bimbos at the New York Times.
Nancy Pelosi said the same thing in 1995.
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