The Associated Press, which does not seem to be a fan of either the namer or the named, says in its writeup about Trump’s announcement and Perdue’s background that “Perdue pushed Trump’s debunked lies about electoral fraud during his failed gubernatorial bid” in 2022 after having lost his U.S. Senate seat (December 6, 2024).
It is possible to differ with reporters in one’s estimation of the nature and consequences of the many and various and deliberate and largely uninvestigated irregularities of the 2020 presidential election without being a liar—a fact that even reporters may know. Which would make the two authors of this report the liars here.
Controversies about how the 2020 election was conducted cannot be adjudicated in a notice about the Perdue nomination. But it was the AP reporter-liars, not me, who rendered this detail of Perdue’s views and biography more than incidental by asserting, as if it were self-evident, that disagreement about the scope of electoral fraud in 2020 can only be dishonest; I was just minding my own business. (Nor is this anti-reportorial dishonesty an isolated incident in the article. See the AP’s paragraph on Trump’s naming of Brandon Judd as ambassador to Chile.)
Trade
Trade policy is the AP’s main theme insofar as its report pertains to the conflicts between the U.S. and China that Perdue would be dealing with.
A second Trump administration is expected to test U.S.-China relations even more than the Republican’s first term, when the U.S. imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion in Chinese products.
That brought Beijing to the negotiating table, and in 2020, the two sides signed a trade deal in which China committed to improve intellectual property rights and buy an extra $200 billion of American goods. A couple years later, a research group showed that China had bought essentially none of the goods it had promised.
Before Trump’s return to power, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, had been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
I’m pretty sure that China also did not “improve intellectual property rights” as a result of such agreements.
We must be careful about crediting plans to decouple from China as if the follow-through were a foregone conclusion. But more companies may be withdrawing partly or wholly from China or “planning” to do so in part thanks to the first Trump administration’s focus on China.
Newsweek reports that during David Perdue’s 2014 run for the U.S. Senate, “when a reporter asked how he would defend his outsourcing [as a businessman] to China, he said he was ‘proud’ of it. He said: ‘I mean, this is a part of American business, part of any business. I mean, outsourcing is the procurement of products or services to help your business run.’ ”
But in this context, to offer a defense of outsourcing or market process in general is to evade the question of the advisability of outsourcing to China in particular.
Space
On the other hand, Perdue has sounded the alarm about China’s reasons for trying to win the “space war”: “I have been a China watcher for much of my career,” he said. “China for 30 years has viewed space as a military effort. We need to recognize that.”
In making his announcement about Purdue’s nomination, Trump said: “As a Fortune 500 CEO, who had a 40-year international business career, and served in the U.S. Senate, David brings valuable expertise to help build our relationship with China.
“He has lived in Singapore and Hong Kong, and worked in Asia and China for much of his career. In the U.S. Senate, he served on the Armed Services Committee, where he was Chair of the powerful Sea Power Subcommittee. He also served on the Foreign Relations Committee, the only Republican to serve on both Committees.
“He will be instrumental in implementing my strategy to maintain peace in the region, and a productive working relationship with China’s leaders.”
Productive working relationship?
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “Why China Isn’t Fighting Back in America’s ‘Trade War’ ”
StopTheChinazis.org: “Why Does China Want the Moon?”
