President Barack Obama talks with Vice President Joe Biden and Senior Advisor David Plouffe in the Outer Oval Office, April 26, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
At The American Spectator, Jed Babbin reminds readers about the time Joe Biden was brought on to the Obama campaign as a “foreign policy expert.” He writes:
Having spent thirty-six years in the Senate, he was brought on Obama’s presidential ticket as a foreign policy expert. Joe, having chaired the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was going to lend his policy expertise to Obama, who hadn’t any at all.
Biden’s supposed expertise was on display at a campaign stop last week when he proclaimed that China wasn’t bad and that they’re no competition for us.
Biden said, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.” He said that China had its hands full with domestic and regional problems from the “China Sea” (he apparently meant the South China Sea) to “… the mountains in the West.” It’s not at all clear whether he meant the mountainous region in western China where the Uighur Muslims live, or the Urals or the Alps.
Biden continued, saying, “They can’t figure out how they’re 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.”
Biden is wrong, profoundly so, on both economic and strategic grounds.
Let’s start with Biden’s supposed support for America’s blue-collar workers. He brags that unions have been his most reliable supporters and they have in the past. But union votes are often credited with putting Donald Trump over the top in 2016.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, our huge trade deficit with China led to the loss of 3.4 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2015. Three-quarters of the jobs lost, according to EFI, were in the manufacturing sector where union jobs predominate.
Through enormously unfair trade practices and currency manipulation, China has effectively stolen a large part of our economy. But, according to Joe, they’re no competition for us.
Read more here.
