Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Tuesday on his show that President Donald Trump’s negotiations with China and other policies could bring a “real economic boom” to the U.S.
The Trump administration began its first negotiations with China on Saturday, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announcing Sunday that “substantial progress” had been made since the tariff war broke out in April. While discussing the issue on “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” Hanson questioned the “outrage” from outlets like the Wall Street Journal and said Trump is trying to save American jobs through his tariff negotiations.
“What Donald Trump is trying to do is to lower the amount of foreign capital and exchange they have at their disposal and save American jobs,” Hanson said. “So if he gets this $1.2 dollar surplus down to $500 hundred million — that sounds to me like he might be able to do that. Cut it in half without destroying them. Then wean us off slowly of Chinese dependence. It’s a fantastic boom.”
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“What’s so weird about it is that every economist that I know of has been warning us … that it was not sustainable to be running these huge trade deficits,” Hanson added. “No other president has really addressed it. No other president has talked about the trade deficit. Nobody’s talked about the budget deficit, not since Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich balanced the budget deficit. Nobody’s talking about the national debt. I never heard Biden — did you ever hear him say one word that we’re paying $3 billion dollars a day in interest? I didn’t.”
After Trump announced tariffs against a handful of countries, China responded with retaliatory measures. While the president later placed a 90-day pause on tariffs for all nations except China, the country was hit with a 145% tariff from the U.S.
Pundits pointed to rising tensions between the two countries, noting how the stock market fluctuated following the tariff hits.
Hanson went on to say how the “left-wing media” has ignored “real indicators” of the economy, like how the U.S. job growth and lowering of inflation “defied expectations.”
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“So all the news was good, and then they got the trade that the big elephant in the room is China, and if they can make movement then South Korea is next and then Japan and then Taiwan and then Singapore. They’ll all fall in place,” Hanson said.
“The last people to do it will be our so-called friends that we protect, and those will be the Europeans,” Hanson said. “They will be the most unhappy if Donald Trump is successful. Maybe rivaled by the American left that is just openly now hoping for a recession.”
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released May 2, the U.S. added 177,000 non-farm payroll jobs in April, following 185,000 in March. The better-than-expected job growth comes as inflation cooled in March, with the consumer price index rising 2.4%.
“I don’t think they realize that if he does get 7 to 8 trillion dollars of foreign investment, we’ve never had that before. We’ve never had an end to illegal immigration,” Hanson added. “That’s a multi-billion-dollar drain bringing people in and giving them 17, 18, 20 thousand dollars a year in support.”
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“Then bringing all this energy online, coal, natural gas. It’s a multifaceted effort, and if it all works, and I think there’s a good chance it could, then we could see a real economic boom, and nobody’s talking about it,” Hanson said.
Since his campaign, Trump has aimed to revive the economy after the U.S. faced soaring inflation under former President Joe Biden starting in January 2021. With voters prioritizing the economy, inflation and the border crisis ahead of the 2024 election, Trump’s second administration has clamped down on the southern border, carrying out mass deportations of illegal migrants with criminal records, despite pushback from Democrats.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
