Rep. Dan Crenshaw Explains the China Trade War | Joe Rogan

Now, one of the big issues that's in the news right now is the trade war with China. I mean, this is a huge issue. And it's made me dive into a lot of really weird stuff with Huawei and with Chinese governments involved in various corporations. And it's a hard concept to grasp for the average American citizen that the corporations in China are an extra big connected to the communist government. And that this is, they work hand in hand. They do the bidding of the government. They work together even though they are profitable, radically profitable. They also do things specifically at the bidding of the government, including inserting shit that can allow people to spy on people, which is why they're banning Huawei devices. And it all comes back to what you were talking about earlier too, an intellectual copyright with, in terms of pharmaceutical drugs, the same thing can be said about electronics. I mean, there's entire Apple stores in China that have nothing to do with Apple. They don't even, they just make their own stuff and call it Apple stuff. Thieves. Yeah. It's very strange, right? What do you think about this sort of like Tiger war that's going on right now that we're seeing play out publicly? Well, I think that Chinese deserve every bit of it for all the reasons you just stated. Their intellectual property theft is rampant and it has been for a very long time. And we've been in this position where our business community doesn't want to bash them too bad because they want that market to be opened up. And they'll be very conciliatory to whatever the Chinese want in order to get openings to that market. And Trump is the first president to really say, no, enough is enough. And so while I'm- I'm sorry, I didn't interrupt you, but you think that's because he's the first person that actually has a background in business, like real big business? That could be it. That could be it. I don't know why exactly, but I know he's doing it. So he's been talking about this for a very long time. Yes, he has. That's what I'm saying. This isn't new to him. Talking about this in the 90s. He was, yeah. And I'm not overly sympathetic to trade wars, especially with our allies. I was happy to see us getting to a deal with Canada and Mexico. I don't see a point in strong arming them. But with China, I'm much more sympathetic to it. And I think that should largely be bipartisan. You don't even see Democrats slamming Trump too much for this. But there are consequences. And so I would like the president to be more forthright about, listen, we are going to feel some pain too because when you implement tariffs, you're affecting people's supply chains. And when you do that, you're hurting American businesses too. There has to be a reason for that. And the reason is the Chinese are bad actors. And we are in sort of an economic Cold War with them. The Chinese think in 50-year terms. We think in four-year terms. They have a huge advantage in this sense. They have huge advantage that they can prop up their businesses and put forth their Belt and Road initiatives. And Made in China 2025, I think is... I'm getting that wrong. But they can manipulate public opinion to encourage those statist policies. And there's disadvantages to that too. It means they're much less dynamic. The fact that they steal everything means they'll never be competitive. They're not truly a great nation the way they're making themselves out to be because they're thieves. And I think we should point that out. But we are in this cultural war with them. We are in this economic Cold War with them. And that's nothing new. But it is coming to the forefront. And so we've got to be careful. I would prefer... We take fights to the WTO. We actually have a good history of being successful in the WTO against the Chinese. And we go after singular companies like Huawei. I would like to see that. Again, I'm sympathetic to the tariffs, but they do hurt us. They hurt us. There are a lot of people in my district. Texas is a good competitive market. We do well when there's free competition. And so we tend to want more free trade and more free competition because we know we can handle it. So when there's not that, it can tend to hurt because we have very complex supply chains throughout the world. And we have to take note of that. It seems like a game of chicken almost. It is, yeah. That's what it seems like back and forth. It's like who's going to blink? It is like that. Yeah. That's so crazy. That's how international business gets done. It seems so bizarre to a dummy like me sitting on the sidelines going, what are these guys doing? And there's no playbook that tells you exactly how you should go forth with this. And so there just isn't. And it makes it harder. You've got to take a lot of things into account and have a good end goal in mind. And I think we could do a better job of having that. But in the end, I think as a – holistically, I'm more sympathetic to being hard on the Chinese.