U.S. President Donald Trump is a “strategic genius,” and his administration is likely to resolve the U.S.-China economic crisis before the end of his term – at least according to Mitchell Silk, who served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Markets during Trump’s previous administration.
Silk, the first Chasidic Jew to hold such a senior position in a U.S. administration, is considered an expert on Chinese law and finance. Speaking on the ILTV Podcast, he explained that Trump is playing what he calls “3D chess” – a reference to a variant of chess played on a three-dimensional chess board.
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“Trump sees far, far in front of him,” Silk insisted, noting that Trump and his Treasury team “did a good job on the trade front during Trump 45.”
Of the accomplishments during that time, Silk said he is most proud of the phase one trade agreement with China.
“The president used a rather large leverage point in the form of tariffs to get the Chinese to come to the table, and ultimately, we settled a deal with them that didn't completely erase the whole of the deficit, but put a good dent into it,” Silk told ILTV. He added that the agreement also addressed other key issues such as intellectual property, cyber concerns, predatory international development finance practices, and more.
Now, in Trump 47, Silk said, “it’s brilliant what the president has done” by coming into office and “punching on day one” – leveraging executive authority to impose tariffs across the board.
“A lot of folks will argue that tariffs are not good for the economy,” Silk acknowledged. “The numbers, I think, show otherwise – not all of the numbers, but a lot of the numbers. But one can only look at numbers at a particular point in time. I'm wholly confident that we will see benefits economically that will come in the mid- and the long-term.”
According to Silk, in about six months in office, Trump has already cut deals with around 10 countries that represent roughly 70 percent of the U.S. trade deficit. At the same time, those agreements include commitments for direct investment into the United States and purchases of American energy.
“This means that he's assisting in onshoring manufacturing and helping build our industrial base, and therefore also as a byproduct of that helping unemployment numbers, labor numbers, while at the same time pursuing his energy dominance policy,” Silk explained.
“Third chess really refers to that whole process,” he added, “bringing that first group of countries in, clearing the way so that we could focus our important resources on cracking the biggest trade knot, which is obviously China, which represents the biggest piece of that remaining 20 percent of the deficit.”
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