Trump Blinks in Trade Standoff with China
BALDWIN: The very first woman to lead the CIA is officially on the job, she is Gina Haspel. She took the oath of office at CIA headquarters; President Trump was there to congratulate her.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today we also mark another proud milestone as Gina becomes the first woman ever to lead the CIA. I know that you will thrive as the agency's director. And help keep our nation safe, strong and proud and free. Good luck. God bless you, and god bless the men and women of the</s>CIA. GINA HASPEL, NEW CIA DIRECTOR: Mr. President, thank you again for giving me the opportunity to serve. To represent the men and women of CIA, and to carry out the critical work of helping protect our country, our people and our way of life. I also want to express a special thank you and welcome to Eliza and Zoe who have joined us today. The notes from these two young ladies ages 6 and 7 sent to me, sat on my desk the last two months and motivated me daily. They express their excitement about the opportunity my nomination represented, and to Eliza and Zoe, I would say, we did it.</s>BALDWIN: Now, she had faced some criticism from a number of Democrats in the Bush administration's detention. Gina Haspel was confirmed by a vote 54-45. President Trump touting a victorious deal with China on trade among a flurry of morning tweets -- he claimed, quoting him, China has agreed to buy massive amounts of additional farm and agricultural products. But despite a U.S./China joint statement, the reality is a bit more murky as Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acknowledged.</s>WILBUR ROSS, COMMERCE SECRETARY: It's not a definitive agreement. For the moment it's at the 40,000-foot level. This is not a definitive agreement. This is what we hope will be a path forward. We have agreed on a framework; the effort is to translate that framework into an executable reality.</s>BALDWIN: The reality right now, the only firm commitment is from the United States which has agreed to suspend new tariffs on Chinese goods while talks are under way. Let me bring in two voices. CNN's senior economic analyst and former Trump economic advisor, Stephen Moore, and CNN political commentator and "Washington Post" columnist, Catherine Rampell. Great to have both of you on, and Catherine just starting with you, think of President Trump and the mantra, we have to get tough on China. Did he just blink in his own trade war threat with China?</s>CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND "WASHINGTON POST" COLUMNIST: I will say at the outset I think it's a good thing that we are not imposing these tariffs, no one wins a trade war despite what the president has said. But that aside, it's not actually that clear we've gained a lot of ground with China. Basically, we have sutured a self-inflicted wound in that we put tariffs on the table and then took them off. And we haven't really gotten any firm commitment from China on the things that really matter which is intellectual property. That's where we're really hurting, that's where American companies really have the most to complain about, it's not about deficits, it's not about exports, which frankly in the two areas where we appear to have gotten concessions, that was likely to happen anyway namely agriculture and energy. The thing that matters is IP and there was some really meal- mouthed language in that joint communique on that matter.</s>BALDWIN: But on IP, Stephen, I want to hear how you feel. Aren't China's so-called concessions like keeping intellectual property, blocking U.S. companies while Chinese companies invest freely, aren't those things they were going to do anyway?</s>STEPHEN MOORE, CNN SENIOR ECONOMIC ANALYST AND FORMER TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISOR: Well, you never know with China. I don't want a trade war either. That would have negative consequences for the economy and the stock market. It's tough to get tough with China. I think it's time to do that. Have we gotten concessions? It's really kind of too early to tell. China has been stone walling according to my sources in the White House. They're not making a lot of concession concessions quite frankly. The repercussion by the way of that, if they don't start making concessions, they need to. They are stealing 300 to $500 billion of our technology a year, that's the intellectual property we're talking about. Trump is -- maybe excessively obsessed about the trade deficit. We've reduced our trade barriers a lot with China. China still has enormous barriers to American markets penetrating that market. So, I think the bottom line here is, not a lot of progress yet, if that doesn't happen, I think Trump will slap them with some pretty punitive tariffs.</s>BALDWIN: But Stephen, if they aren't making the concessions why did Trump take the tariffs off the table?</s>MOORE: Because he's trying to get to that point. This is -- look, with Donald Trump it's always about the art of the deal. He's a pretty darn good negotiator. We all hope for the best. We want to see China make those concessions. I think the point is, he hasn't really taken the tariffs off the table. I think if this breaks down, those tariffs are coming.</s>BALDWIN: What was last week about, Catherine, Trump's shift to save Chinese jobs. ZTE, despite his own intel community calling ZTE a threat.</s>RAMPELL: His intel community called it a cyber security threat. The Pentagon said it was a cyber security threat. More to the point, the Commerce Department a month ago, imposed these harsh penalties on this company because they had repeatedly violated a settlement agreement related to illegal sales to Iran and North Korea. There were a lot of things to complain about with ZTE. It's a little peculiar that Trump made that tweet last week. What you're seeing is, this administration has a very incoherent policy agenda related to trade. You have these warring factions within the administration, the more free-trade side like Larry Kudlow and Stephen Mnuchin versus Peter Navarro and Robert Lighthizer. There's a lot of warring going on, dueling messaging. You have mixed messaging over the last 24 hours coming from the administration in various TV interviews and statements. Because there's all of this incoherence and the administration doesn't really have a fixed coherent set of demands of what we want from China, and China does have a fixed set of demands it wants from us, it puts China in a much better negotiating position.</s>BALDWIN: We don't have a fixed coherent set of demands. You want to respond to that?</s>MOORE: I think it's fairly coherent. Donald Trump is demanding China make some real concessions here. He's the first president in 25 years to get tough with China. Where was Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama.</s>RAMPELL: In what sense has he gotten tough with China? Barack Obama actually put together the so-called coalition of the willing that Larry Kudlow has been touting, the Trans Pacific Partnership.</s>MOORE: Except it didn't --</s>RAMPELL: Except Trump pulled us out of it. If we wanted to get tough with China on intellectual property protection. The way to do that was through a multilateral action banning trade with other countries which we have similar complaints.</s>MOORE: I happen to be -- fine. I happen to be in favor of TPP. The point, we haven't made any progress with China for 25 years, as the trade deficits get bigger and as they've continued to steal from us $300-$500 billion a year. That can't continue.</s>RAMPELL: Yes, but we had a route.</s>MOORE: How would that have --</s>RAMPELL: TPP that you agree with.</s>MOORE: There were problems with TPP. You can't blame Trump for not getting a deal and being too tough with China. I think he's going to be really tough with China. I think if we don't get many the American people are behind him. Donald Trump understands something that George Bush and Barack Obama didn't understand. China is our enemy. China is not our friend or ally. Look what's happening in terms of military --</s>RAMPELL: The mechanism that would have been affected in terms of getting what we wanted out of China, would have been banding together with our allies. Beefing up our IP protection along with our allies. And using that as leverage. We lost that leverage which now belatedly the administration seems to recognize.</s>BALDWIN: Also, hanging out in the forbidden city didn't look much like enemy territory to me either. We'll see what he does from here on out. And if he will stay true and be tough with China.</s>MOORE: Look what they're doing militarily.</s>BALDWIN: That's a whole --</s>MOORE: Look at Korea, a look at the fact that they continue to cheat and steal and lie about, how is that the behavior of a friendly country?</s>BALDWIN: Who wants to follow up with the president and the action, Stephen and Catherine, that's another conversation, we've got to go but I appreciate that helping the discussion very much. We have to talk about what's happening in Hawaii next. These volcanic eruptions spewing dangerous chemicals into the air. We will take you there live.