Wall Street took heart on Wednesday when US President Donald Trump picked Larry Kudlow to replace former Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn as his new National Economic Council chief. Cohn quit, at least in part, because Trump refused to heed his warnings against imposing tariffs. Kudlow was an outspoken supporter of Cohn’s efforts to prevent Trump from engaging in reckless protectionist behavior, and is seen as someone who can carry the torch of free trade advocacy in the White House.
After accepting Trump’s offer to join the White House, the frequent CNBC contributor has maintained his opposition to blanket tariffs, but seems to be giving lip service to comments from the president on Tuesday.
“[Kudlow] now has come around to believing in tariffs as a negotiating point,” Trump said regarding speculation about his choice to fill the post.
In his first interview since the announcement that he would take on the role, Kudlow took the opportunity to send a warning to China.
“I must say as somebody who doesn’t like tariffs, I think China has earned a tough response not only from the United States,” Kudlow said on CNBC Wednesday.
“A thought that I have is the United States could lead a coalition of large trading partners and allies against China, or to let China know that they’re breaking the rules left and right,” he said. “That’s the way I’d like to see. You call it a sort of a trade coalition of the willing,” an apparent reference to then-president George W Bush’s “coalition of the willing” in the war against Iraq.
When you lose in the game where you set the rules, you go back and rewrite it. The problems is others might not like it and start setting their own rules. Then you might have to follow the new rules others set, or you are out.
I don’t understand all the warlike talk. Whatever China has done or is doing, why can’t we just take the attitude they have a competing strategy that we understand and we will develop a counter to it and in the meantime work with China to find common threads that meet their needs and ours because I think Xi Jinping could be a win-win strategic thinker.
I also wish the never-Trumpers and the war hawks in both parties would layoff the Russians. I believe Trump, Jinping and Putin are capable of finding strategies that allow all of us to compete without uncivil effect and bring along the rest of the world. It must be remembered that the US and its allies have heavy sanctions on Russia, whose purpose has not been realized and therefore they are ineffective except they create hostile relations which produce Russia’s reactions and we don’t really know how Putin would respond to a benign political environment. I’m not naive, I just don’t see the results from the current strategies.