Former President Donald Trump Sunday railed against the Biden administration's decision to rejoin the World Health Organization while defending his own action to pull out over the reaction to China and the coronavirus.
"They really are puppets for China," he said about the WHO. "They called and they wanted us to stay in. I said how much are we paying? Approximately $500 million. How much is China paying? Much larger in terms of population country."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration decided to reenter the organization and pay the same $500 million that was being paid before.
"It's a tremendous amount of money, but compared to trillions it's not, but it's a tremendous amount of money," said Trump. "Why would China pay $39 million and we're paying almost $500 million? Why? So we could have made the same deal that China had, $39 million."
Meanwhile, conservatives believe in standing up to China, bringing back factories and supply chains, and ensuring that America, not China, "dominates the future of the world."
"We took in hundreds of millions of dollars from China during my administration, hundreds," he said. "it was a one-way street. We took in hundreds of millions, and during negotiations they would say, look, we don't want any more of these tariffs. Those tariffs, we took in so much money. And what happened is they became competitive."
However "in all fairness to China," the United States made a pre-COVID trade deal with the country, but once COVID happened, "I no longer cared so much about the trade deal because what happened with that was just disgraceful."
He added that companies that leave the United States to create jobs in China and other countries that have "ripped us off for years should not be rewarded."
"That's what the Biden administration, that's what the Biden administration is doing. But, of course, as you know, they have a very close, personal relationship with China, so I don't expect much to happen," said Trump.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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