Peter Lewis: Asia Business correspondent on Marco Rubio nomination to be Secretary of State and Beijing prepares powerful countermeasures in anticipation of Trump's comeback

Trump has nominated Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State.  

Rubio, an Iran and China hawk who serves on the Senate foreign relations committee, would become one of the most prominent members of Trump’s foreign policy team if confirmed by the Senate next year. He would be the first sitting secretary of state to have been sanctioned by Beijing, meaning he cannot visit China. Rubio sponsored a bill trying to prevent the import of goods made by China’s ethnic Uyghur minority, which Biden later signed into law. 

Meanwhile, Beijing has prepared powerful countermeasures to retaliate against US companies if president-elect Donald Trump reignites a smouldering trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Peter Lewis Asia Business correspondent with that's hello, Peter, good evening.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
How's China feeling about Marco Rubio?

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Then, well, with some alarm because he hasn't in the
past been a great friend of China. He was the
guy who sponsored the bill to prevent the import of
goods which are made by China's ethnic Wiga minorities, which
Joe Biden later signed into law. And he was also

(00:28):
the cauth of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Acts,
which ultimately led to the US Treasury issuing sanctions on
many Hong Kong officials, including the current Chief Executive John
Lee and the Secretary for Security Chris Tang. So he
has formed here and when you look back at some
of his comments and he says the threat from China

(00:50):
is the one that's going to define this century. So
it's a fairly hard line appointment, a very hawkish one.
And you have to combine that also with Trump's National
Security advisor Mike Wolls, who's also extremely outspoken about China.
He describes China as the greater threat to the United

(01:11):
States than any other nation. So this is a very hawkish,
fairly anti China pair. But a lot depends, i think,
because they're obviously not going to make the policy towards
China that's going to come from Trump himself, and a
lot depends upon which version of Trump turns up. Is
it going to be the one who's fairly transactional and

(01:33):
wants to do a trade deal with China and all
of this is just a way of arm twisting them
to come to the table, Or is it going to
be the angry, vengeful Trump who's going to want revenge
on China because they relayed on that first trade deal
that they made in his first presidency. They didn't buy
anything like the two hundred billion dollars worth of goods

(01:55):
that they promised to do. They blame COVID for that,
and Trump also blames China and COVID for ending his
presidency after just one term. So it's very hard to
know what we're going to get. But the way the
fit stars are lining up at the moment, it doesn't
look great for China. And you have to combine that
with the fact that also Marco Ruba himself is sanctioned

(02:17):
by Beijing, so it means he can never actually visit
China as long as he's on that.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Sanctions list, would they take him off?

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, remember this happened before when John Lee couldn't go
to San Francisco for the APEX summits and the US
refused to take him off the list. They were saying
this was the law. Where you can imagine China saying
the same thing now in retaliation.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, yeah, fair enough, okay, And so I understand that
Beijing actually was prepared for Trump and they have got
a whole bunch of countermeasures.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
What are these countermeasures, Well.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
They have, I mean, they've spent the last couple of
years sort of almost mirroring the laws that the US
is pot in place. So they've got their own now
anti foreign sanctions law so that it can counter measures
taken by other countries. It's also got its own version
of the entities list that the US has, so it

(03:09):
can put on it foreign companies that it deems to
have undermined its national interests. So it certainly is prepared
for this, and it could do some damage to the US.
A lot of people think that the boys in the
US is caught because it is the buyer ultimately of

(03:29):
Chinese goods, and the buyer tends to have the upper hand,
and that's certainly true, and they're just aren't enough goods
that China exports that buys from the US that it
could put its own sanctions on. But the thing is,
the US does also buy some things from China that
it absolutely needs, So for example, rare earth metals and

(03:51):
lydium that's absolutely crucial to modern technologies and semiconductors, and
really China controls the global supply chains of these, so
it could really go out and sort of weaponize its
dominance of these of these supply chains and refuse to
sell these wearers lithium that are needed for batteries and

(04:13):
solar panels and so on, and in turn caused damage
a fair bit of damage to the US. And it
has shown in the past it's prepared to do that.
It's put sanctions on various US companies. Skydio was the
most recent one, a big US drone maker, and banned
Chinese groups from providing that company with these critical components.

(04:34):
So it is prepared to go and do it.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Peter, tell me what's the feeling within China about how
Trump and his administration his guys would would how strongly
they would protect Taiwan.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, this is another area where we really don't know
how weadd is Donald Trump to protecting Taiwan. I mean,
he tends to look at relationships, certainly in his first
presidency with close allies like Japan, like South Korea, as
being very transactional, and one of the things is always

(05:08):
said to them is you've got to pay more for
your own defense. So he sees it as you know, look,
I'll look after you if you basically go and buy
more stuff from US. Now, Taiwan has a very easy
way out of its problems with the US. It runs
also large trade surpluses with the US. Just go and

(05:29):
buy weapons from the US. The US is willing to
sell them if it wants that type of transactional deal.
Taiwan could offer to go and buy them. Now. The
problem is under the Biden administration, it hasn't wanted to
sell some of the things that Taiwan wants, like advanced
fighter jets, because it will be seen as too provocative.
But you could see Trump going down that route now

(05:51):
if he does, and if he gets anywhere near close
to crossing the China's red lines on Taiwan and the
things that's been threatened, as you know, actually starting to
recognize Taiwan more formally and diplomatically. Then I think it
would close off any space for discussions between China and

(06:13):
the US. They just simply wouldn't come to the table.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Interesting and very very interesting.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Hey, Peter, thanks very much, Really appreciate you talking us
through that. I can't wait to see how this all
plays out. As Peter Lewis Asia Business Correspondent.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
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