Tucker: Biden seems unconcerned with China's use of debt to control other countries
Lanhee Chen, Stanford fellow and Calif. controller candidate, offers reaction and analysis on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'
The Communist Party of China is actively seeking to make the Chinese currency supplant the U.S. Dollar while simultaneously using debt to essentially take over other countries' infrastructure, particularly in South America and Africa, Hoover Institution fellow and California controller candidate Lanhee Chen told Fox News on Thursday.
On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," host Tucker Carlson recounted to Chen how both parties in Washington helped devalue the dollar already through profligate inflationary spending, and how Argentina is the latest country interested in China's "Belt and Road Initiative" that is already party to 19 other Caribbean and South American nations.
Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (L) inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing December 4, 2013. (REUTERS/Lintao Zhang/Pool//File Photo)
"The goal that China has is to use its currency to supplant the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. And they're able to do that essentially because in the United States, we've made a series of policy decisions that frankly erode the power of the dollar, erode our ability to have influence around the world," Chen said.
"I think that's the biggest challenge we face – you mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative. The way that essentially China gains influence is to go into countries, to finance projects, not with equity, but with debt – They essentially put countries in a debt trap."
Chen pointed to Laos, a country in Southeast Asia, where China took control of the power grid because officials could not repay a loan from Beijing.
China's national flag is seen in front of cranes on a construction site at a commercial district in Beijing, China, January 26, 2016. (REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)
"You see this all over the world, Tucker," he said, adding that Biden and other U.S. politicians are "not awake to this – but keep adding to the problem."
"When you put $6 trillion of fiscal stimulus into the economy as President Biden and Democrats did last year, you're going to end up with big-time inflation. Unfortunately, that's what we're seeing. It's eroding the purchasing power of people here in the United States," he said.
"[T]he challenges we face, really, unfortunately, Tucker are self-inflicted. And I don't know how we're going to get out of this unless we have a massive course correction when it comes to economic policy in this country."
Carlson later remarked that Chen should be the one to run the U.S. Federal Reserve, not Chairman Jay Powell.
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