"This is the first of many [trade actions]," Trump said Thursday. "The new measures will primarily target certain products in the technology sector where Beijing holds an advantage over Washington.
In response to Trump's move, China announced $3 billion in retaliatory tariffs against 128 US goods in the farming, aluminum and steel industries.
Speaking to Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear, writer and political analyst Ajit Singh told show hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou that the Trump administration is really just trying to do anything to keep China from toppling the US' global dominance.
"I think really what… the Trump administration is after, regardless of Trump's rhetoric of being pals with [Chinese President] Xi Jinping, has always been this sort of targeting of China's technological rise and trying to retain its own technological dominance, which is a pillar of the United States' international dominance and its ability to dictate and play a really strong role in shaping the international, political and economic order," Singh said.
"I think while China is generally cast as a thief or insidious actor in economic affairs it has always been upfront and open about what it's policy has been, which has been to develop its economy so it's independent from Western powers like the United States," he added.
Becker later brought up an op-ed published by the New York Times following Trump's tariff announcement and suggested that the publication was "sympathetic" to the tariffs and was more anti-China than 45.
"This is something that we've consistently seen from the so-called liberal resistance… whenever Donald Trump does anything their main concern is trying to find a way to attack him," Singh noted. "We've seen it with the North Korea issue where Trump accepted Kim Jong Un's invitation… from people like Rachel Maddow, from the New York Times, from other so-called liberal media outlets which had said ‘how dare you treat Kim Jong Un like an equal, there's a reason no the US president has met with him.'"
"Now it's ‘how dare a country from the global south think it should be independent'… any time there's a country whether its capitalist, socialist or whatever pursues an independent path, the US approach is to try and pressure and strangulate that economy… the greatest example of this is Cuba, which has been for decades under a brutal economic blockade," he added.
Singh went on to point out that outlets like the New York Times prefer POTUS to deal with autocrats such as "Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who they call a revolutionary, a monarchist."
"This is totally an opportunist attempt to continue to promote hawkish policy toward China and Russia because they challenge the foundations of US international dominance. These two trends in the United States establishments are unified in their desire to advance US imperialism and its really just opportunist jabs at one another over different opinions on tactics or strategies."
