K.T. McFarland, former deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, told Newsmax on Thursday that President-elect Donald Trump will have "leverage" over China once he takes office.
"China's economy depends on exporting a lot of stuff to us, and we don't need to buy the Chinese stuff," McFarland said in an interview on "Newsline."
"There are a lot of other places we could get the kind of goods that China sells ... That was a fundamental aspect of President Trump's first term, which is you can use that as leverage and get a good trade deal.
"The Chinese economy has never recovered from COVID ... There's a lot of empty shells in the air and holes in the Chinese economy," she said.
"So China needs to sell to us even more now than they did four or five years ago."
McFarland said this need "will give President Trump an enormous amount of leverage," as will Trump's energy policies.
"China has always been a very needy country for energy," she said. "They don't have any oil.
"They don't have any natural gas, dirty coal. And as AI [artificial intelligence] and high technology continues to demand more and more electricity, China needs a lot of electricity."
McFarland said some of China's energy comes from Russia and some "from other parts of the world — from Iran for sure. But if the United States does what Donald Trump says on day one — 'drill, baby, drill, — if we unleash the American energy industry, we can use that as a major point of leverage with the Chinese."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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