While mainstream media attacks President Trump’s tough stance on China, they ignore the harsh reality of Communist China’s decades-long economic warfare against American workers and families.
The real reason Trump imposed massive tariffs is Beijing’s longstanding pattern of cheating, stealing, and manipulation, costing the U.S. trillions of dollars and millions of jobs.
What the media won’t tell you: According to congressional estimates: China’s theft of American intellectual property, currency manipulation, and unfair trade practices amount to the largest transfer of wealth in human history.
The scope of China’s economic aggression is staggering.
The 2024 U.S. trade deficit exceeded $1.2 trillion, what the White House correctly called “an unsustainable crisis” that has “hollowed out our manufacturing base” and left American workers behind.
During his first term, Trump administration officials estimated that Communist China stole between $200 billion and $600 billion worth of American intellectual property each year through a vast, state-sponsored system of theft, carried out by what investigators described as an army of domestic hackers, overseas spies, and corrupt corporate insiders.
This was compounded by Beijing’s policy of forced technology transfer, requiring American companies in China to hand over proprietary information as a condition for access to Chinese markets.
The national security implications are even more alarming. America’s dangerous dependence on Communist China for critical components, materials, and rare earth minerals has left our defense industrial base vulnerable.
These resources power everything from precision-guided missiles to advanced radar systems that protect American troops overseas.
Perhaps most unconscionably, China plays a central role in the fentanyl crisis killing over 200 Americans daily. Trump imposed specific “fentanyl tariffs” after determining that Chinese companies supply the precursor chemicals flowing through Mexico into American communities.
The White House found that China was “actively sustaining and expanding the business of poisoning our citizens” through this deadly trade that generates billions for Chinese chemical companies.
Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, Communist China has systematically violated trade rules while building the world’s largest trade surplus at America’s expense.
They’ve used non-market practices, forced technology transfers, state subsidies, and currency manipulation to create an unlevel playing field that has devastated American manufacturing communities across the Midwest and South.
Trump’s tariffs mark the first serious effort by any administration to push back against China’s economic aggression. Entire American communities were gutted as manufacturing jobs moved overseas, eroding the economic foundation of families and small towns.
By imposing costs on Chinese exporters who benefit from state subsidies and trade cheating, Trump’s tariff strategy aimed to protect American workers and begin restoring fairness to global trade.
Xi Jinping’s strong response to Trump’s tariffs reveals how effective they’ve been at disrupting Beijing’s collapsing economic model. China’s GDP grew by only 5% in 2024, a sharp decline from over 10% just before Xi took office.
Meanwhile, Rhodium Group believes the number to be even lower at just 2.4% to 2.8%, because official data was “impossible to reconcile with increasingly frantic efforts to prop up a flagging economy” through massive stimulus packages.
Youth unemployment reached in excess of 21% when Beijing stopped reporting it in August 2023, then Beijing created a new way of calculating which brought the number down to 14.9% by excluding students from the calculation. However, even under the new method, youth unemployment has increased to 16.9% as of February 2025.
The communist country is also facing a mounting debt crisis, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 303%.
When all liabilities are included, central and local government debt, off-the-books LGFV borrowing, shadow banking, private sector loans, real estate debt, and external obligations, China’s total debt reaches a staggering $57.2 trillion that Beijing will ultimately have to reckon with.
With over $2.1 trillion in local government debt coming due over the next five years—and land sales revenue, which funds 27–30% of local budgets, plummeting by 16% in 2024 after a 44% drop from its 2021 peak, Xi desperately needs access to American export markets to keep his regime afloat.
But U.S. tariffs have triggered factory-gate deflation, making Chinese companies increasingly unprofitable and forcing layoffs of millions of migrant workers who fall outside official unemployment figures.
In response, Beijing has turned to increasingly desperate tactics, including rare earth export restrictions, diplomatic threats, and propaganda campaigns aimed at pressuring the U.S. to roll back tariffs that threaten China’s economic survival.
The current crisis makes clear that any relationship with the Communist regime will be exploited for China’s advantage, regardless of agreements or commitments.
Beijing violated the Phase One trade deal during Trump’s first term, and there is no reason to believe they will honor any deal now. Trump and many other conservative policymakers increasingly recognize that full economic decoupling from China may be necessary to safeguard American interests.
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