2020 Race: Donald Trump lashes ‘stupid pawn’ Joe Biden on China

Donald Trump vows to decouple the US economy from China if he wins the election and labels Joe Biden a ‘pawn’ of Beijing.

Donald Trump has vowed to decouple the US economy from China if he wins the election, and has attacked his opponent Joe Biden as a ‘pawn’ for Beijing as both candidates enter the final eight weeks of a ferociously fought campaign.

Mr Trump’s strident comments came during a wide-ranging White House press conference on the Labor Day holiday which traditionally marks the homestretch of the US election campaign.

Mr Trump accused the former Vice President Mr Biden of being “stupid” for selling out US jobs to China through his past support for Beijing’s integration into the world economy, a move which he said had caused 70,000 US factories to shut.

“Today’s Labor Day — it’s a good time to talk about where we’re being ripped off by countries, but nobody’s even close to China,” the president said.

“In 2001 Biden said the United States welcomes the emergence of a prosperous integrated China at the global stage because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules. They didn’t play by the rules.”

“If Biden wins, China wins, because China will own this country,” he said.

In a pitch aimed at the manufacturing workers in the Midwest who voted for Trump in 2016, the president said if elected for a second term he would “make America into the manufacturing superpower of the world and we’ll end reliance on China once and for all.

“Whether it’s decoupling or putting massive tariffs on China which I’ve been doing already,” he said. “We’re going to end our reliance on China because we can’t rely on China and I don’t want them building a military like they’re building right now and they’re using our money to build it.

“Now you can understand why China would much rather see Sleepy Joe than Donald Trump,” he said.

Both Mr Biden and Mr Trump have accused each other of mishandling the relationship with China, with Mr Biden saying the president is responsible for a damaging tariff war that he says has hurt US workers more than China.

Mr Biden spent Labor Day in the swing state of Pennsylvania, garnering endorsements from major union leaders as he pitches himself as the candidate for middle class workers.

Mr Biden said he grew up in a household in the working class town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which had great admiration for the work done by unions.

“We knew who built the country,” Mr Biden said. “We figured it out early on.”

Mr Biden enters the homestretch of the campaign with a comfortable, but not unbeatable, national lead of 7.1 points according to the RealClear Politics average of polls.

But his lead in the key battleground states that will decide the election is not as strong with Mr Biden ahead by 1.8 points in Florida, 2.6 points in Michigan, 4.2 points in Pennsylvania, and five points in both Wisconsin and Arizona.

Mr Biden is trying to make the election a referendum on Mr Trump’s performance as president and his campaign is focusing on the president’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and the related collapse of the US economy.

Mr Trump is seeking to portray the 77-year-old Mr Biden as an over- the-hill product of the Washington swamp who would be a puppet for the left-wing leaders of the Democratic Party like Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders.

The president is also running hard on a law and order campaign, saying Mr Biden would do little to stop the current unrest and violence in many US cities perpetrated by militant members of left-wing groups like Antifa.

Mr Trump said on Tuesday (AEST) he would create up to 10 million new jobs in 2021 and he again repeated his claim that the US would produce a vaccine for the coronavirus by the end of this year and possibly before the November 3 election.

He criticised Democrat mayors and Governors for doing nothing to stop the violence in cities like Portland, Rochester and Chicago.

Mr Trump also once again denied allegations made in a story in the Atlantic that he had refused to visit a US war cemetery in France in 2018 because it was full of ‘losers.’

“The story is a hoax … it’s a totally made up story … who would say a thing like that,’ Mr Trump said. “Only an animal would say a thing like that.’

(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)