The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was a hardliner Republican before Trump appointed him the head of American premier civilian intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and later on to serve as the top US foreign diplomat.
Although the post he was elevated to is highly demanding and sought him to be well-balanced, the ex-spymaster has overly botched to offload his ham-fisted and parochial instinct that seemed to have dominated in his numerous photo shoots.
During his term so far, his hostile tone has further ruptured US ties with several countries including the US’ European allies. The opening of too many frontages at one fell swoop reveals that he is naive in handling the delicate international relations.
In order to overcome his serious diplomatic lacking, the former army captain greatly banks on incongruous theories and lies. Recently, he accused China for ripping up the US and global economy by not sharing the information it had on coronavirus.
Pompeo trashed all the diplomatic norms and crowed the reprehensible allegations over the killer bug that by not sharing the data, “they (China) failed to comply with their most fundamental obligations as a nation” and then “to cover that up.”
Lately, he has been spreading blunt lies about origin of the virus, alleging that it has emanated from Wuhan Institute of Laboratory. The former intelligence chief has “enormous evidence” about his sham contention but doesn’t “have certainty.”
While the attack on the Chinese nation was woeful and unforeseen, it was deplorable for a top US official delegate to drag the people of another country or the government to justify his shallow claims without providing any evidence at all.
Even though the international analysts and intelligence experts including the intelligence-sharing group of the Five Eyes – including the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have confirmed it is “highly unlikely” that it was an accident – he continues to parrot his spurious lab theory.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University said that these kinds of charges by Trump administration are “reckless and dangerous” and could drag the world into a “conflict just as Bush Administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq pushed the US into war in 2003.”
In an interview with CGTN separately, he blasted Trump for shifting the blame of his failures on China such as loss of jobs, loss of competitiveness and now the deaths from the Covid-19. “And this is working in the United States, unfortunately, as a political tactic, but it’s a very dangerous one.”
Sachs consistent warnings about the “dangerous” campaign of the Trump administration toward China, led by Secretary Pompeo, tells that the US president and his hawkish advisers are laying the country on a suicidal track for their egocentric and sporadic political ambitions.
By propagating the venomous thoughts, Trump is redirecting his 2020 presidential campaign in lines with 2016 canvassing when he used to smear China to fire emotions of Americans by pledging to reduce trade deficit and relocate the US manufacturing facilities back in the country.
On the other hand, Pompeo, one of the worst US secretaries of State ever, has been irrationally and rashly knocking Beijing to placate Trump so that he may book a chair in the cabinet of next government. And the whole dirty politicking flits around only one exploitative socket: blame China on the coronavirus pandemic to cover up offending lapses in containing Covid-19.
While the outbreak outsmarts American life and economy – the US federal government cannot escape from its statutory duty to ensure the citizens’ health and protect businesses and thus would eventually be accountable to the people for a chain of bloopers – slackened response to the highly contagious disease that exterminated thousands of people, erased millions of jobs and floored trillion-dollars of economy.
In order to galvanize his election probability amid surging unemployment and tumbling economic numbers, the US president wants to reroute trade war with China. Last Friday, Trump said he was “very torn” about whether to terminate the hard-won phase-one deal with Beijing.
On Monday, a top White House trade adviser Peter Navarro fueled speculation after he said “A bill has to come due for China” and accused it for inflicting tremendous loss to the global economy. “It’s not a question of punishing them; it’s a question of holding China accountable, the Chinese Communist Party accountable.”
The rabble-rousing statement emerged just days after the trade officials from China and the US discussed economic and trade issues including the phase one deal – appreciated the progress on creating the governmental infrastructure necessary to make the agreement a success and pledged to meet their obligations.
Such an act, if committed by the US president, would be a disaster for the US economy and thousands of small businesses that rely on cheap Chinese raw material, as well as manufactured goods, to survive in a highly competitive international market.
As the move would provoke Beijing to slap retaliatory tariffs, American exports to China, which had just started to climb, would immediately take a swipe while millions of domestic farmers, who have put everything at stake on Trump’s advice to buy more land and “huge tractors” and are seeing the farm exports mounting, will be furious too.
Despite the strong wave of coronavirus in the country, Beijing had radically increased its farm imports from the US. In the first quarter of 2020, the US shipments of soybean, meat, cotton and fiber to China witnessed a whopping surge of 210%, 640%, 43.5% and 17% as compared to the same period of last year.
In April, there were reports that China was planning to buy 30 million of crops, mostly from the US, to fulfill its purchase commitments and boost its state stockpiles including 10 million tons of soybean, 20 million tons of corn and 1 million ton of cotton worth of more than $6.25 billion. The US poultry and product exports to China in March were also the largest for any month since August 2013.
While economists have repeatedly shown that the US businesses and consumers are paying the duties Trump enacted on Chinese goods – millions of enraged American businessmen and farmers alongside their families could retaliate in the upcoming US presidential elections, ignoring his spending of more than $23 billion from the US taxpayers’ money to the farmers.
Though the hostile attitude and tariff saber-rattling being actively promoted by the hawkish White House officials may probably help to stoke hatred about China, the political hoax can no way revive US economy or retrieve millions of jobs – which would continue to haunt Trump throughout the rest of his presidential campaign.
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Azhar Azam works in a private Organization as “Market & Business Analyst” and writes on economy, geopolitical issues and regional conflicts.
Featured image is from FAIR
