Brit Hume: Trump 'badly needs' China strategy to be a success ahead of 2020 election

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Brit Hume on politics of President Trump's China trade policy, potential of a Biden-Harris ticket

President Trump's trade policy with China carries potential risk and reward for the 2020 election, argues Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume.

President Trump "badly needs" to score a win with his "bold" China strategy so he can head into the 2020 election at his strongest, according to Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume.

Hume told Sandra Smith on "America's Newsroom" on Monday he believes the president tackled two "bold initiatives" -- trade with China and denuclearizing North Korea -- and that if, "either or both pan out, that will very much strengthen his hand going into 2020."

"If neither does, that obviously will have the opposite effect, and make it much more likely, I think, that a Democrat will come in."

Hume continued: "The President carries the burden of being personally unpopular will the majority of the American people, many of whom may approve of his results, particularly on the economy so far, but do not approve of him personally,"

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"That’s a burden he’s carried since he got elected…Indeed, before he got elected. So, he carries that initial burden and therefore badly needs success on these initiatives of his.”

The comments came after the president fired a series of tweets at the Chinese over the weekend, after talks between the two nations last week.

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U.S. stocks tumbled more than 600 points Monday as trade tensions continue to rise between the two power players. China also slapped $60 billion dollar retaliatory tariffs on American goods set to begin on June 1st. All of this sending averages to lows not seen since March.

In addition to raising tariffs on Friday, President Trump is now threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on the rest of the goods China exports to the United States. His advisers said that is approximately $300 billion of Chinese products.

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President Trump warned, “China should not retaliate-will only get worse!”

The president also hypothesized in an early-morning tweet: “I think that China felt they were being beaten so badly in the recent negotiation that they may as well wait around for the next election, 2020, to see if they could get lucky & have a Democrat win.”

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Hume reacted to the president's tweets, saying: “My sense is that China wants a deal and doesn’t want to have to wait -- what -- a year and a half more for a new administration and then the additional time it will take for that new administration to settle in and perhaps revise or perhaps not revise the current posture towards China.”

The economy has been a strong political point for the president’s 2020 push with 263,000 jobs added in the month of April and the unemployment rate at 3.6 percent. It was the first time since 2015 that the first-quarter GDP topped 3 percent.

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Last week’s talks in Washington marked the eleventh time that senior Chinese and American officials have met to discuss trade since the President took office in 2016.

Both President Trump and Chinese President Trump Xi Jinping could potentially come face-to-face when both are in Japan next month for a meeting of the Group of 20 leaders.