National security adviser Mike Waltz implied the Trump administration is preventing further spying threats from China by demonstrating military strength.
The Trump administration is adopting an offensive position over the previous Biden administration’s defensive position when it comes to China. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in recent weeks that made sweeping cuts at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America and other state-funded news agencies such as Radio Free Asia that broadcast to authoritarian regimes. This followed the president’s tariffs against China and pressure on TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company.
“President Trump realizes this is the competition of this century. China has the economy, military wherewithal, a navy that now by numbers larger than ours, a nuclear arsenal that is tripling, everything they’re doing in space, but he also knows the way we win is through the strength of our economy and our markets,” Waltz said on Fox News’s My View with Lara Trump on Saturday. “It’s about revitalizing our pharmaceuticals, our steel, our shipyards and shipbuilding. Of course, infusing that culture change of getting back to meritocracy and lethality in our military. That’s how you prevent wars. That’s how you show strength. Deter with strength in our military and win economically and with our markets.”
Waltz inherited the position after a Chinese spy balloon hovered over “our most sensitive nuclear sites” while he was serving in the House of Representatives under then-President Joe Biden. At the time, Biden was criticized for not shooting down the balloon sooner than he did. The national security advisers claimed that “going on offense is how you change behaviors.”
MIKE WALTZ ASSERTS KEEPING U.S. SAFE IS ‘UNDER THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF’S AUTHORITY’
Trump’s second term comes after a years-long border crisis that included immigrants illegally crossing the border and an increase of Chinese-produced fentanyl discovered among states sharing borders with Mexico and Canada. As a result, Mexico and Canada are also facing tariffs for not taking more ardent stances against drug trafficking at their borders.
Tariffs against China will no doubt affect ecommerce giants like Amazon. A Jungle Scout survey among sellers from Amazon found that over 70% of products come at least in part from China. No other country came close despite the fact that sellers were able to cite more than one country in the survey. Meanwhile, the U.S. accounted for less than a third of products. Amazon remains the biggest client of the United States Postal Service.
