Donald Trump is already prepping for presidential life.
And according to the former president, if re-elected, he already has plans on what world leader he’ll be contacting as his first order of business.
Trump said Monday that his “first call” will be made to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Why? To reinvigorate and enforce a trade deal from the end of his tenure as president.
“My first call, I’m going to call up President Xi. I’m going to say, ‘You have to honor the deal you made. We made a deal. You’d buy $50 billion worth of American farm product.’ And I guarantee you he will buy it. 100% he will buy it,” Trump said Monday during a campaign event in Smithton, Pennsylvania.
Trump orchestrated a trade deal with China in 2020 that included Beijing’s commitment to halt intellectual property theft, refrain from currency manipulation, cooperate in financial services and purchase an additional $200 billion of U.S. products over two years, including up to $50 billion of U.S. agriculture.
In return, the U.S. vowed to reduce tariffs on some products made in China, but keep duties the White House has imposed on $375 billion worth of merchandise.
The deal was dubbed the “phase one” trade agreement and came amid the U.S. and China’s 18-month trade war.
But according to Trump, the momentum never continued.
“Biden and Harris, they’re never going to enforce anything… That group is a disaster. It’s a disaster for our country in so many ways, but certainly the farmers are one of those ways,” Trump said of the current administration and the deal.
Trump joined a panel of farmers on yesterday afternoon as part of a Protecting America Initiative event, which is a group led by Trump’s acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell and former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin that works to prevent China from infiltrating U.S. “farmland, food supply, education system, energy production, manufacturing chains, and our national security.”
Trump added that in addition to calling on China to honor its 2020 trade deal, he would tell Xi to enforce a death penalty on fentanyl dealers sending the fatal drug to the U.S. via the Mexico border.
“Second thing I’m going to do is, I’m going to say you have to give the death penalty to your fentanyl dealers who are sending fentanyl. You know, in China, they give the death penalty. They don’t have a drug problem because they give the death penalty,” Trump said.
If re-elected, keep tabs on Trump’s immediate relationship with China.