It's absolutely amazing that the Trump team thinks they have been "tough" on China. The reality is that Trump's approach to China has been uniquely ineffective and counterproductive, and only serves Trump's personal interests. Let's review... https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1275870334357569542

Trump's trade war has hurt American workers without getting China to make necessary structural changes to its economy. Trump's abandoning of US leadership, derision of US allies, and assault on multilateral institutions has hurt America's ability to counter worrying CCP actions.

What has Trump done with China? He asked Xi Jinping twice to help Trump win re-election - once by asking Xi to investigate Biden and again by asking for the trade "deal" to consist of Chinese purchases of agricultural goods from key Trump political constituencies.

As the coronavirus outbreak began in China, and the intelligence community and the WHO and everyone else tried to alert Trump about the dangers, Trump downplayed the risks so he wouldn't upset Xi Jinping and ruin his trade "deal" that was intended to help his campaign.

All along, Trump has refused to push China on everything from human rights to investigations into criminal activity by Chinese firms. In fact, he encouraged Xi to keep building concentration camps for Uighurs and tried to stop criminal probes into ZTE and Huawei.

The sad reality is that Trump regularly sides with Xi Jinping over the American people because Trump wants Xi's help in the 2020 campaign. For Trump, everything is about his own personal interests, and the American people get left behind.

We outline all of this in a new @CAPAction memo from me, @kellymagsamen, Melanie Hart, @TheJordanLink and Laura Edwards. https://cdn.americanprogressaction.org/content/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/24115136/NSIPaction-memo.pdf