U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said on Tuesday the United States must beat China “in the competition for the 21st century,” while her presidential election rival, Donald Trump, said China had feared him and would pay billions in tariffs if he returned to the White House.
Democratic presidential nominee Harris and Republican nominee Trump clashed for 90 minutes in a debate in Philadelphia that was largely focused on domestic issues but touched on foreign affairs, in particular the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, China and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The debate began with probably the biggest concern of U.S. voters, the state of the American economy.
A moderator, referring to a Trump plan to impose tariffs of as much as 20% on all imports, asked if Americans could afford the higher prices that the policy would bring. Trump dismissed that suggestion.
“They’re not going to have higher prices. What’s going to happen, who’s going to have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years,” Trump said, pointing out that some tariffs he introduced had been retained by the Joe Biden administration over the past three-and-a-half years.
“China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars and so were other countries,” he said.
“We’re going to take in billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump added, referring to his hoped-for second term.
Harris has backed the Biden administration's targeted tariffs on only certain Chinese imports – such as a 100% rate on electric cars and a 50% rate on solar panels – arguing it will bolster domestic manufacturing without causing wider economic damage.
Trump has proposed an across-the-board rate of "more than" 60% on Chinese imports, and a rate of 10% – or even 20% – on all other imports, in order to revive the U.S. manufacturing sector and reduce reliance on foreign trade.
Harris said Trump as president had “invited trade wars” and resulted in a trade deficit.
“If you want to talk about his deal with China, what he ended up doing is, under Donald Trump’s presidency, he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military, basically sold us out,” she said.
“A policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century, which means focusing on the details of what that requires,” Harris said.
“Focusing on relationships with our allies, focusing on investing in American-based technology so we win the race on AI, on quantum computing, focusing on what we need to do to support America’s workforce so that we don’t end up on the short end of the stick in terms of workers’ rights.”
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The debate, hosted by American broadcaster ABC News, was the first time the two have faced each other since Harris entered the race.
President Joe Biden, 81, dropped out of the race in late July after stumbling through a debate with Trump, 78, raising concerns among Democrat politicians and donors that voters would not back him in the November presidential poll.
Harris, 59, won the Democratic nomination last month. She is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president.
Trading barbs
Harris took Trump to task for a response to China’s President Xi Jinping over the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
“With COVID he actually thanked President Xi for what he did during COVID,” Harris said, referring to a Trump post on Twitter at the time.
“Look at his Tweet – ‘Thank you President Xi’, exclamation point – when we know that Xi was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of COVID.”
China faced criticism in the early stage of the pandemic for what some health experts said was a bid to cover up the disease and its origin. Beijing rejects that.
Trump criticized the Biden administration’s overall record in international affairs, saying: “The leaders of other countries think that they’re weak and incompetent and they are.”
Harris repeated assertions she made during her nomination speech on Aug. 22 that Trump liked to "cozy-up" to dictators.
“It is well-known that he exchanged ‘love letters’ with Kim Jong Un,” said Harris, referring to unprecedented communication between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader that led to three meetings between Trump and Kim, but no breakthrough on efforts to press North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programs.
Trump highlighted his relationship with authoritarian Hungarian leader Victor Orban, citing Orban as saying: “You need Trump back as president.”
Referring to himself in the third person, Trump spoke of his standing on the world stage. “China was afraid of him, North Korea was afraid of him … Russia was afraid of him,” he said.
Harris said Trump adored strongmen instead of caring about democracy and the American people.
“These dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because it is so clear they can manipulate you with flattery and favors,” Harris said. She also cited unidentified U.S. military leaders referring to Trump as “a disgrace.”
Trump attacked the Democrats’ record on immigration and American industry, accusing the Biden administration of “losing” 10,000 manufacturing jobs in August.
“They’re building big auto plants in Mexico, in many cases owned by China. What they have given to China is unbelievable. We will put tariffs on those cars so they won’t come into our country,” said Trump.
Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.