p.m. eastern here on c-span and you can watch online or listen with our free radio app. up next, a portion of today's washington journal on u.s. china relations. we will show you as much of this until about noon eastern and the start of the event on at risk you -- at risk youth. host: this is bethany allen-ebrahimian. she's a contributing reporter for foreign policy. good morning. guest: good morning. host: in a general sense, how do the two countries each other? guest: before trump took office and xi jingping consolidated power, they saw each other as partners. there is a certain amount of this trust -- distrust between the two, but cooperation at arms length. what we are seeing since trump

took office with his tough rhetoric towards china and xi jingping's assertive attitude towards the world, you are looking to towards a bit more distrust and a stronger sense of competition, even a stronger sense of rivalry. host: what is the source of distrust or are there several sources? guest: several sources. president trump views china as an economic enemy. i think he has used that term. on china's part, they see the u.s. trying to contain their ambitions, their territorial ambitions in the south china sea, their ambitions to contribute more to global institutions and to have more military power around the world. on both sides, there's definitely a sense of increasing tension. host: with that in mind, talk about the placement of tariffs from the united states on certain products, the

retaliation from china. spell out what happened and what are the larger implications there? guest: earlier in march, president trump took the step that he had set his course last year when he asked for investigation into whether or not china's steel dumping, aluminum dumping created a national security risk for the u.s. as our steel and aluminum industries have been hollowed out the past few years. after that report came back, it seemed to recommend the tariffs and that's what he did. he slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum and not just on china's, but many countries including our allies like japan, south korea, and european countries. that was what trump did. china immediately stated that they were strongly opposed to

that and they would be considering their own retaliatory measures. what has happened now is china has implemented its own retaliatory tariffs on 128 u.s. products, including pork and wine. these tariffs are on products of about $3 billion worth up to 25%. host: our guest will continue on with us, but if you want to talk -- ask her questions, she has talked about some things economics included. , you can give us a call. republicans --(202) 748-8001. democrats --(202) 748-8000. independents --(202) 748-8002. , ouran also email us twitter feed, and c-span.org. let's hear from the president earlier back in march talking about this idea of putting tariffs on chinese products and the justification for doing so. here is president trump. [video clip] pres. trump: in particular with china, we are going to be doing a section 301 trade action.

billion be about $60 but that's really a fraction of what we are talking about. i have been speaking with the highest chinese representatives, including the president, and i have asked them to reduce the trade deficit immediately by $100 billion, a lot. so that would be anywhere from 25%, depending on the way you figure, to maybe something even more than that. but we have to do that. the word i want to use is reciprocal. when they charge 25% for a car to go in and we charge 2% for their car to come into the united states, that's not good. that's how china rebuilt itself.

the tremendous money we have paid since the founding of the world trade organization, which has actually been a disaster for us, it's been very unfair to us. the arbitrations are very unfair. the judging has been very unfair. knowingly, we always have a minority. host: that is president trump talking about this. in the long run, economically, who gets hurt more -- the united states or china? guest: chinese exports of steel and aluminum to the u.s. really are not that much. for the steel industry, we do import quite a bit of steel, but most of it is not from china. it's around 2% to 5%. maybe 2% comes from china, which is why these tariffs have been levied on so many countries around the world. this tariff is not the way to stop chinese steel dumping.

it is sent to a lot of countries and then it comes to the u.s. this is not solving the problems of chinese steel dumping. this is just going to hurt the u.s. a tariff like this, there will be wto cases that come into play. it really alienates our allies who are asking what did we do to deserve this? it is not clear how in the long run it will really solve the problem. host: in larger geopolitics, we looked to china for help on north korea and other issues. how do those efforts get impacted by these tariffs specifically? guest: that's a difficult question and that's part of the issue of the strategic rivalry we have with china. the fact is that we do need china's help, especially on north korea. 90% of north korean exports go to china. china is really north korea's only ally. any kind of pressure that we want to levy on north korea cannot really be effective without china's help. and we see that even as trump

has accepted this upcoming meeting with kim jong-un, what we saw last week was that kim made a trip to beijing to see xi jingping. and that shows us whether we want it or not, china has a really big role. it is very difficult on the one hand to ask for china's help and on the other hand try to push them away or harm them. host: this is bethany allen-ebrahimian. she is joining us to talk about the u.s.-china relations. she is a contributing reporter for foreign policy. the first call comes from roger. roger is in alabama on the line for independents. you are on with our guest. go ahead. caller: china and united states has to work together with each other on this because if one fails, the other does. i am one of the noncollege , and it isite males

these college educated idiots that got us in this mess to start with. host: that need of dependence on each other, is that a reality? guest: roger was definitely right about that. china and the u.s. have the two biggest economies in the world. they are heavily intertwined. we have to partner with each other when it comes to global trade issues, when it comes to even security situations. that is absolutely right. host: democrats line, eric's next in maryland. hi. caller: i always assumed that since we started trading with china that everything would be taken to the wto. if you had a problem or trump had a problem, the information he got back from his investigation or wherever he got the information from should have been taken to the wto. you make the case. they rule. and that's why we trade with people.

i don't understand where trump gets the authority to just slap sanctions on other countries. guest: well, certainly these tariffs are going to be taken to the wto. you can count on that. not just china, other countries whether it's south korea or european countries, they will very likely bring this to the wto. it is important to note that the u.s. has taken many trade cases to the wto and won, including cases against china. host: aside from the retaliated tariffs that china has put, have we heard a formal statement from china about the united states actions? guest: yes. the foreign ministry spokesperson has delivered remarks on this and they are understandably not happy. host: from maryland, democrats line, robert, go ahead. you are next. caller: good morning to both of you. as someone in national security

and has been his whole career, i certainly agree that we maintain a robust steel and aluminum industry. key allies, especially mexico and canada since we can travel by land and maintain it. the question i wanted to ask is i guess, what's your thoughts on if subsidies had been the case? it's kind of an indirect way to do it, but in terms of maintaining these two industries. guest: in terms of steel and aluminum? i think that president trump looked at a variety of possible ways to address this. i think there is a distinction to be made, which you hinted at perhaps, between the steel and aluminum industries. in terms of military grade aluminum used in fighter jets

and our electrical grid, we are down to one plant in the entire united states that actually produces that. if that were to close, the only other plants that make this are outside of this hemisphere. in the middle east, russia, iceland. that does seem to be a concern. steel on the other hand, we have many countries produce the kind of steel that we would need. that is less of a national security concern in reality. host: aside from economics, how much influence does china have in the united states overtly or covertly? guest: that's a question we are trying to look at now. if you look at australia and the discussion in australia, in the past year and a half, what is happening there is equivalent to our debate about russian influence here. for australia, it is china. they have seen in the past decade or so chinese money coming in rather covertly into their political campaigns, influencing candidates.

you have seen in particular lots of attempts to control the chinese diaspora there. initial investigations here in the u.s. have revealed some similar trends, some similar phenomena with tight control the -- of the chinese diaspora here. attempts to insert money into our political debate, into our narratives here, that is something that right now we are kind of at a snowball effect. there's a lot of increasing interest among the fbi and our security agencies. lawmakers, you have seen marco rubio, ted cruz pay more attention to this. it is certainly something that is going to be a building debate in the months to come. host: this specific legislation and some of the elements promote the agenda of foreign governments to register as foreign agent and forces universities to disclose donations from foreign sources of $50,000 or more.

why are those things important to consider when it comes to china? guest: we talked about the foreign registration act especially since rt was forced to register. it was an old law passed in 1938 the has a lot of gray areas. there's a lot of ways that people or companies or nonprofits or donors who do have ties to foreign countries or foreign political parties don't have to register. there's a lot of perhaps foreign influence that we are not aware of. what this law would do is try to -- toy what what clarify what exactly, is a media outlet that has editorial control and foreign funding from the government, they would have to register. that means other chinese media funded outlets here.

in terms of universities, there are particular concerns about confucius institutes. they have attempted in some cases to censor discussion on campus about sensitive issues such as taiwan or tibet. but up to this point, they have not had to register. and our contracts with universities are very opaque. we don't know how much money the universities are getting and what conditions are. this law would attempt to help bring transparency to those agreements. host: from our republican line from washington state, hello. caller: good morning. the question i have today has to do with chinese tariffs on american exports prior to 2018. the tariff issue has been going on the united states ever since the united states has existed , before the united states existed.

prior to 2018 in the last two decades, what chinese tariffs have been placed on u.s. exports? guest: the remain a lot of nontariff barriers and a lot of barriers to foreign investment in china. china did not enter the wto until 2001. it has been a process and they made many promises in 2001 that they would further open sectors of their economy to foreign investment. that opening up has been slow and in some cases not particularly existent. there are large sectors of the chinese economy, including infrastructure and key industries such as steel resources, that are not open to foreign investment at all. their other forms of nontariff barriers. there was an interesting case last year in which chinese internet censorship floated the possibility of it being a nontariff barrier. for example, google cannot

operate in china. apple faces a lot of barriers there. there are these kinds of barriers. host: one of the things that constantly comes up in this discussion on trade tariffs whether it's the trade deficit between our two countries. factor that into the discussion and how much of a concern should this be as far as the deficit between imports and exports? guest: that depends on your perspective. for president trump, it's a very large concern. i personally don't feel it's a very large concern. that is the nature of economics right now. china has an export-based model. many other countries around the world have trade deficits with china. and really regardless of your perspective on it, the thing is that you cannot just simply have

a goal of getting rid of a trade deficit. it is not that simple. complex factors come into play. this is our goal. we are going to get rid of that deficit. that should not be the goal. that should be a result of a change in your economic model or a change in your strategic approach to trade. as a goal, it does not make a lot of sense. host: michael from illinois, you are on. caller: i would like the lady to comment on this point. i believe that this problem started 30 or more years ago with the business class in this country committing treason, shipping our jobs over to china, doing all this technology transfer because you cannot set up a company in china unless you give them access to all your technology or whatever is involved. so it's actually our business community because of greed and

self-interest that have created this problem. china would still be a third-rate power today if it wasn't for the treasonous business community in this country. they destroy the middle class. when we go to war with china, it's the middle class that's going to have to get killed trying to defend this country. that's my comment and i would like her to respond. guest: sure. the idea of shipping jobs abroad, we get something in return. one thing we get in return is lower consumer prices. if you have ever shopped at walmart for example, they are things that are notoriously made in china and cheaper than anywhere else. when you have lower consumer prices for daily goods, that contributes to a higher standard of living for average shoppers .

it can increase their quality of life. i think a problem that we have in the u.s. is that we have not put enough resources into creating more jobs to replace the ones that were shipped abroad. on the question of tech transfer, i would certainly agree with you that these technology transfers are a major problem. what happens is chinese companies with basically the support of their government companiescoerce our here and say we will not partner with you unless you transfer technology. there is a coercion coming from a powerful chinese state. what we need here is for the powerful u.s. government to back up u.s. companies and to say you don't have to do that and to put pressure on china to end that practice. i would agree with you. the technology transfer is a major concern. host: this idea of china when it steals intellectual-property, how rampant is that and how much

of a concern is that to the united states? guest: it's a huge problem and is absolutely rampant and has been for a long time. one of the major targets, you were talking earlier about maybe covert chinese influence operations in the u.s. one of their main targets is our science and technology. china really wants what the u.s. has and they have been extremely successful in the past 10 to 15 years. let's use the word stealing huge, billions and billions of dollars worth of technology or intellectual property that u.s. taxpayers have developed with their own tax dollars. that's a huge concern. it's difficult to know exactly how to stop it because here's an example. you have a chinese graduate student who comes to the u.s.

and he actually has been sent by the cla and he steals some military secrets from his graduate school and brings them back to china. how do you prevent that without basically shutting down all of our acceptance of graduate students that would harm us more than help us? it's a very difficult issue and one the u.s. is trying to grapple with. host: back in march, robert lighthizer appeared before the finance committee to talk about this idea of intellectual property theft. you can see the hearing in total when you go to our website at c-span.org. here's a portion with the trade representative on that topic. [video clip] >> the first question that we ask is do we have a problem with ip theft? and of course, we do. if you look at the record going back to 1991, george herbert walker bush brought at 301 against china for failure to protect ip. we had one from clinton, none of which amounted to much.

then we had a system of dialogues over the time in the wto. during that time on at least 10 different occasions, china made specific commitments not to do certain things in the space. it has not kept any of them. we start with the proposition that one of the most important parts of our entire economy is the ip protection. it's an extreme competitive advantage to the united states and the core of a number of sectors that you do not think of as high-tech. we have done a study and will put that study up quickly. the members will have that as soon as we possibly can give it to you. it's an extensive study of about 200 pages and it documents this very serious problem. host: we are talking about u.s.-china relations with bethany allen-ebrahimian. foreign policy, she is a contributing reporter. from indiana, republican line,

this is jessica. caller: i'm a nonprofessional with a nonprofessional with the seventh grade education from warsaw, indiana. i'm calling to say i'm a mother protecting her children and i have a right to do that. i want to comment on all this nonsense brouhaha about everybody wanting all the money for all the electronics because i have an issue. i am homeless and i love my children and i don't have a cell phone. i'm using a company phone to simply say to my children i love you. all this nonsense about wanting more money for electronics is bs. host: we will go to david in michigan on the democrats line. caller: i just heard you say that lower prices helped create a higher standard of living. higher wages and increased spending that not only causes a consumer demand also increases a higher standard of living and is what used to fuel the american

economy. we don't have that now with lower prices. the lower prices and shipping jobs as part of the race to the bottom. sure, it allows people to afford products, but these are cheap products. these are not products that are made here. it does not fuel the american economy. it is higher wages and consumer demand that is created by the spending of people making money with the jobs that used to be here. it is what used to create and fuel the american economy. we are in the doldrums now because of lower prices and trying to increase the standard of living that way. host: we will let our guest respond. guest: another way to increase the higher standard of living is higher wages. as i mentioned, one of the problems that are economy faces is that we have not put the resources into developing

sectors or retraining people whose jobs have gone abroad. that is something that hopefully we can work more towards in the future. another sort of issue here is that a lot of jobs have disappeared because of automation and that is simply not a trade issue. host: this is ted in washington state on the independent line. caller: i've a couple of questions for the guest there. the first one is, right after the election, there was a big thing about trump getting 300 patents or other things in china that he had been waiting for that gives him rights on stuff there. i just want to know what that has. the second part of my question is the stuff they make in china, just like the last gentleman said is cheap. , used to be able to go buy a toaster and it would last 20 years.

now you buy toaster and it lasts maybe a year. all the money that just came back, this is the other question. we just allow the corporations come back and gave them a tax break for taking jobs overseas and let them bring that money back and they are going, we're going to give a couple of bonuses. that's the money that was taken overseas and that's where the money for our middle class went. host: thank you. guest: i will address the issue of the cheap goods coming out of china. that's really a function of the level of development of china's economy. for example, we think of goods coming from japan these days as high-quality and being expensive and high-tech. that wasn't always the case. in the 1950's and 1960's as japan's economy was being -- still developing, it was made in japan to be cheap, poor quality goods. quickly the quality of their

goods improved. i would fully expect that to happen with china and it's already happening as some of the clothing factories and really cheap goods, those factories have left china. withhave gone to places less-developed economies like vietnam and bangladesh. it's not a function of china per se but if function of a moment in time where the economy was not developed. host: we are looking at u.s.-china relations. (202) 748-8001 --republicans. (202) 748-8000 -- democrats. and independents --(202) 748-8002. i want to show you a headline from a recent "washington post" -- here is the headline. happened? guest: so basically, last month the national people's congress, which is china's rubberstamp

legislature, passed an amendment that would get rid of term limits on the president of china. so that basically paved the way for xi jingping to be dictator for life if he so desires, which he probably does. this was not necessarily a shock. this has been rumored for a couple of years. specifically in october when there was the last major party congress, using ping -- xi j ingping broke from president ended not establish a successor. we did not know who would be coming after him. that's indeed because no one is coming after him. what we have seen in china is what we have seen in many other countries around the world in the past few years, which is increasing authoritarianism. i just got back from moscow. it certainly feels authoritarian there in many respects as putin has really weakened russia's democracy.

putin has played politics to be able to stay in power. i think it is 16 years now. what we see is that for some countries, for some strong leaders in some countries, they feel this is the best way to take their country forward or it's a power grab. host: aside from the power, what is the justification for such a consolidation of power? guest: apart from the power grab, which is the most significant aspect of this, it is true that xi jingping is seen as a very strong leader that puts china first above everyone else. in that way, he has similarities to trump in some ways. in the past five years under the tenure of xi jingping, china has become far more assertive. it has been able to articulate a global foreign policy which it had not been able to.

one thing that xi jingping has done is to crackdown on corruption. for average people in china come -- authoritarian government does not have as much to do with their daily lives as the corruption and the bribes that they are required to pay. if they can make your lives better and get rid of the official corruption, that is great. xi is actually pretty popular as far as we can tell amongst many people in china. i think there's definitely a fear that if he leaves, his successor will not be as successful at cracking down on corruption. perhaps this crackdown may not be permanent. >> as a good thing. >> no sense that he is somewhat he is grooming in the long run. >> there is no apparent successor. >> let's go to dayton, ohio.

tom, good morning. automation does take some business but we are still building plants in mexico and china. my main thing is, the local news here -- the prices for bacon and stuff may go down because of the tariffs china put on. they can put all the tariffs on our groceriesse go up and that is what people have to have, stuff to eat. this makes no sense at all. it is a communist country and we are committing treason -- this is what made america america. to hell with the politicians. the only thing they can agree on is bringing in people to lower

wages and ship jobs out of the country. --t: guest: america is a major food producer. i don't think these tariffs are going to affect our ability to eat. host: mary, you are on. caller: thank you, and good morning. i'm going to go with the beginning when we had things made in the usa. i had a dehumidifier that lasted 25 years. now they only last a year plus i know of two people where their dehumidifier shorted out and cut their house on fire. don't tell me we are getting things cheaper, we are paying a great price. material.