Clearly there will be costs to using economic tools to counter the Chinese Communist Party. Technology investor Dan Niles notes that U.S. multinational companies have a love-hate relationship with China, because they’re often forced to share their technology, but feel they need to be selling to Chinese consumers. “Because they’re the number one buyer of personal computers in the world. They’re the number one buyer of smartphones in the world. They’re the number one buyer of autos in the world. You know, you go down the list, they’re number one in a lot of categories.” Niles adds that virtually all large U.S. companies “to some extent or another do count on China for growth.”52
A leader of one American multinational, speaking on background, offers a recommendation on dealing with China: “I would just very maturely tighten the noose through tariffs, [a trade agreement with other Pacific countries], doing better treaties with the UK and Europe and Japan and Korea. And basically tell the Chinese: ‘These are the new terms of trade. You can be part of the trading system or you don’t have to be part of the trading system. You pick.’ Also, I think a lot of companies on their own are going to be making changes to have more resilience in supply lines and not rely just on one supply line.… I think America should be very tough on the standard of [intellectual property] and anything that makes unfair competition at this point—but maturely. You know, China doesn’t want to be cut off from trade with the rest of the world.” The CEO notes that the U.S. has a strong advantage in rallying other countries to counter Beijing: “The world wants America. For however much we’ve pissed people off, when we reach our hands out to, you know, Europeans or Asians, it’s like, ‘Thank God.’ America has been the beacon of hope—for all our mistakes—the beacon of hope. The true blue.”
The CEO adds, that “if we think Huawei is a legitimate national security issue—and all of the national security people say absolutely—then we should take legitimate national security actions. Like we’ve done. That’s all. You don’t have to breathe too hard over that one.”
And if the government of China misbehaves? “Get tighter and tougher,” adds the CEO. “And punish ’em. If they do cyber stuff, I hope we’re doing it back. I hope we’re doing it back to Russia, too. And my view with China and Russia would be ‘Hey, if you do it here, buddy, whatever you do here, we’ll do it three times there.’ And I mean three times. Fight fire with fire a little bit. But I don’t want to overdo it. I think that, for the most part, they are rational actors in the world. They are very long term. They’re very strategic. They want their rightful place in the world. There’s nothing wrong with that. They have a very tough road ahead of ’em. Much tougher than you think. And dominating America is, you know, in my view, unless America is completely stupid—which we are of course sometimes—there’s no chance. Not in the lifetime of any American…”53
Meanwhile from the White House, Trump told us that “a decoupling is not the worst thing in the world.”54
7
The Media’s Trump Boom
In August 2016, Jim Rutenberg wrote in the New York Times that if you’re a journalist who believes the worst about Donald Trump, “you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century” and “move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional.”1 That line must have gotten a chuckle out of the paper’s few remaining conservative readers—as if the Times had always played it straight until Trump came along. But it was a watershed moment because it was a front-page story acknowledging—and excusing—biased coverage against a candidate whom the majority of reporters had deemed unacceptable.
Mr. Rutenberg then devoted several paragraphs to the possibility that Trump would start a nuclear war. The article also oddly appealed to the authority of MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who “said he was concerned that Mr. Trump was becoming increasingly erratic, and asked rhetorically, ‘How balanced do you have to be when one side is just irrational?’ ”2
The story was controversial when it was published and would be even harder to defend today. With the benefit of hindsight we know that the hysteria about Trump as a warmonger was unfounded and that the greatest federal abuse of the era was committed against Trump, not by him. At the time that Rutenberg was working on his story, FBI officials were throwing out the textbook of American law enforcement and being “oppositional” to a presidential candidate and the rule of law.
According to the inspector general of the Department of Justice, August of 2016 was the month the FBI started collecting exculpatory evidence on Trump supporter Carter Page that would not be shared with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court—neither in the government’s initial application to wiretap him in October 2016 nor in any of the three renewals.3
On the day that Rutenberg’s story appeared on the front page of the New York Times, the following text exchange occurred between two FBI officials:
Lisa Page: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
Peter Strzok: “No. No, he’s not. We’ll stop it.”4
Were the FBI paramours at the center of the Crossfire Hurricane case perhaps inspired by the Times to abandon the standards of their own profession? One thing we know is that the Times argument carried the day among the press corps. Whether inspired by Mr. Rutenberg or not, reporters and producers
