Former Trump adviser and chief communications officer of America First Policy Institute Marc Lotter said that in order for the United States to not be reliant on China, they need to “decouple.”
“The first thing we have to admit is that we have to have what’s called a strategic decoupling,” Lotter said on Thursday’s edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “We can’t just snap our fingers, pass a law and all of a sudden everything that is related or interconnected to China is just simply going to go away.”
Lotter explained that during the Trump administration, the United States was slowly starting to become less dependent on China.
“We actually saw this happening under the Trump administration, as many companies —especially some pharmaceutical companies and other key suppliers — were relocating some of their manufacturing, or at least building additional manufacturing outside of China,” he stated.
“It might not have always come back all the way to the U.S., which is ultimately the goal, but to have it in our allies’ control is very good as long as we can remove the influence from China,” Lotter continued.
The former adviser noted that one thing that did stay in place from the Trump administration was the tariffs on China.
“One of the few areas that the Biden administration hasn’t undone from the Trump administration is keeping the tariffs in place on China,” Lotter said. “Those need to be strengthened. Those need to be continued.”