Hudson's The Realignment Podcast Discusses U.S. Foreign Policy with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

This week on The Realignment podcast, Marshall and Saagar sit down with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the Trump foreign policy doctrine and China’s influence over American culture and business. 

Secretary Pompeo elaborates on how the administration has reshaped U.S. foreign policy, saying:

"It is the ability to speak the truth about things that are functional and things that are not and try to build a set of policies off of very realistic views."

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"We work hard, we have faith, we are a nation of faith. That has, at its very center, optimism. But that optimism has to be girded in a central set of understandings about what is real and what is truthful."

He discussed China's infiltration of American culture, addressing recent news about the NBA: 

"We have an obligation, each of us, to ensure that every American has the right to speak about the things that they care deeply about."

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"There is no moral equivalence between the Chinese Communist Party and the greatness of American democracy."

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"In the end, a short term benefit, some idea that you can make money at expense of your principles, almost always fails." 

And how China has used financial leverageto censor the American film industry: 

"You can't allow them to censor your material. It is impermissible. You wouldn't let the American government tell you what could or could not put in your movie."

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"We at the State Department have the responsibility to try to help them do that, to try to convince the Chinese government that it is not appropriate to do that."

Listen to or watch the full interview here

Hudson experts have also weighed in on China's influence in American culture. In a recent interview in the Washington Times, Rob Spalding  considers how expansive China's financial influence is in the U.S., saying: 

“This is pervasive across our economy, and the companies usually don’t speak out ... It’s usually not public. But obviously, the NBA’s a very public organization and really can’t escape it.”

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“Quite frankly, they’re in conflict. That’s the problem for the leadership of these companies: They have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit, and the Chinese are basically destroying that. It really forces the companies to betray the principles and values of a free and democratic society.”

And Martha Bayles considers how Hollywood is suppressing free speech at the behest of China in The Atlantic. 

Hudson Highlights

Commentary

U.S. Withdraws from Syria

Peter Rough discusses the cease fire agreement with Turkey in an interview on CBC.

Nina Shea considers the implications of Trump’s Syria withdrawal for Syrian Christians and Yazidis in Yahoo News:

The implication of the move is that “the Christians and Yazidis (another ancient religious minority also targeted for ISIS genocide) are no longer protected,” Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, told Yahoo News. “If they don’t flee, they could be killed.”

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Unless Turkey — which fields the second-largest army in NATO behind the United States — can somehow be stopped, Shea warns that the outcome “could be the final blow to the 2,000-year-old Christian presence in that region, as those communities across the Middle East watch with horror and conclude that there is no place for them in the Middle East, that their only hope for a future is in the West.”

Michael Doran discusses the president’s decision to remove troops from northern Syria and what’s next in the region in an interview with Tim Franks on BBC Newshour.

Rebeccah Heinrichs discusses Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria in an interview on Fox News.

Walter Russell Mead considers the challenges this foreign policy decision poses for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a recent column for the Wall Street Journal.

U.S.-China Relations

Tom Duesterberg says size matters when it comes to operating a business in the current U.S.-China trade climate in Axios:

Scores of American small businesses are losing profits and wasting inventory in the U.S.-China trade fight. But the biggest and richest are coasting — in every sector.

What's happening: "Bigger guys, just by virtue of their size, can weather the storm better," says Tom Duesterberg, a trade expert at the Hudson Institute.

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Bigger manufacturers are also faring better than their smaller counterparts.

For most American companies, China is a major part of the supply chain—and rejiggering a decades-old supply chain is costly and difficult, Duesterberg says. The big manufacturers have the resources to make these sweeping changes, and the small ones don't.

In some cases, the bigger players can even get Chinese exporters to cover some of the cost of the tariffs for them, says Duesterberg. "They’ve got more leverage" because they're making massive orders.

Michael Pillsbury on the partial trade agreement between the U.S. and China in CNBC:

The partial trade agreement between the U.S. and China has caused relief among officials in Beijing, one of President Donald Trump’s outside advisors told CNBC on Monday.

“I would say they’re relieved more than happy,” said Michael Pillsbury, director of the Center for Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute whom Trump has called the “leading authority on China.”

In an interview on “The Exchange,” Pillsbury argued that reports that the U.S. would impose punitive measures against China beyond tariffs may have helped lead to “phase one” of a trade deal.

“I think that may have scared the Chinese that they were going to get into a serious trade war with access to our capital markets being cut off, among other things,” Pillsbury said. “These are very scary options. Obviously, that’s off the table now in the sense that there’s been so much substantial progress on Friday, there’s no need to think about escalation options at this time.”

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