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Peter Navarro

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Peter Navarro

White House Trade Adviser

Peter Navarro serves as assistant to the president and director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. In March 2020, President Trump appointed him to coordinate the government’s use of the Defense Production Act to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

The following interview was conducted by Juliet Linderman on August 14, 2020, for the FRONTLINE film America’s Medical Supply Crisis. It is being published as part of the series' Transparency Project and has been edited for clarity.

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Offshore Manufacturing Dangers

So you have been talking about the potential dangers of U.S. manufacturing moving offshore for a very long time before the president was elected, largely on this issue.Is this the type of scenario you were worried about?

No.This is the type of scenario I was worried about on steroids.Let me talk about what I was looking at during the 2000s.I saw, primarily, the Chinese Communist Party engaged in all manner of unfair trade practices designed to take us apart and the world apart, whether it was sweatshop labor, pollution havens, massive subsidies, the use of state-owned enterprises to attack our sectors.What I was concerned about was the loss of our manufacturing base in smaller and medium-sized communities where they would be hollowed out and we would be left with an economy which could not grow fast and which could not generate wage increases, and, as a collateral damage, we would have a defense industrial base which simply could not defend us.Now, up to Donald Trump, that's exactly what we were getting, and all the opioid addiction and alcoholism and crime on top of that.

Well, I'd like to just kind of stay focused on COVID-19.

This is a different kind of danger.What we have now is a world which has basically pulled offshore the bulk of our manufacturing capacity for personal protective equipment, for medical supplies, for medical equipment like ventilators.And for pharmaceuticals in particular, our foreign pharmaceutical dependence is astronomical.It's the key starting materials that make the active pharmaceutical ingredients that go into our finished dosage form: capsules, tablets and injectables.All three phases of that manufacturing process are in places like China and India and Ireland, all for a different set of reasons, and this pandemic has shone a bright light on the dangers, because something like over 80 countries during this pandemic has put some form of export restrictions on what we need as a country to protect our public health.

And that's why we're using the Defense Production Act so aggressively to right that problem.

PPE

And we'll get to the DPA in just a couple of minutes, but let's talk about what's happening on the ground across the United States right now.We are months into this pandemic, and we are still seeing health care workers, doctors, really people on the front lines, going to work every day without the personal protective equipment that they so desperately need.¹

At the time of the interview in August 2020, the FDA identified a shortage of PPE, ranging from gowns to gloves and more. See: FDA article

I would challenge you on that in the following sense, because I'm very actively engaged with HHS and FEMA building up the Strategic National Stockpile.Our version is what we call 2.0.What we inherited from the Obama-Biden administration was essentially an empty cupboard.²

The history of the National Strategic Stockpile can be found at the following link. In it, it describes usage during both Obama-Biden and Trump-Pence's time in office. The last event requiring the stockpile was Hurricane Irma in 2019. See: Department of Health & Human Services article

When this pandemic started, we had very little to fight it with, and it wasn't organized intelligently or strategically.We are in a position now, using things like the Defense Production Act, where we're well on our way by the end of September to filling that stockpile.At the same time, every time we get a request, every time we get a request now from a hospital anywhere around the country, we will endeavor to fill it immediately.These stories that we're seeing in the press, we push back on them every day.We have what we need to get to people what they need, and the only problem there would ever be would be some lack of communication, but we've got what people need.

So do you dispute these reports from nurses and doctors?

You would have to show me your exact report; we will look at it.We run—every day at 11:00 a.m., we come in with what happened over the last 24 hours, and one section of that report is all of the stories that would make claims about maybe we're not getting something somewhere.And what we do is, first of all, check the veracity of it, and if it's true, we get planes in the air or trucks.I have tremendous ability.I can move stuff in hours out of the warehouses, and I've done that multiple times.So yeah, you're dealing with anecdotes, not the true story, at this point in time.

Very clearly—

Yes.

—do you think that there is enough PPE right now, in this country, for nurses and doctors?

Yes, I do.If you just simply look at all the production that we're engaged in, we're net filling the Strategic National Stockpile.Like I say, if there's a hospital around the country that needs something, let us know.If there's a distributor—the way this works also is you've got the stockpile, and then that goes to a distributor like Cardinal or McKesson, and then they are able to get it to the hospitals or physicians.We feel like, based on what we've done with the Defense Production Act under President Trump's leadership, that we've made great strides.Now, going forward—

I just want to ask you one thing.[HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response] Dr. [Robert] Kadlec in March estimated that we were going to need about 3.5 billion N95s if this reaches pandemic status, which obviously it has.³

You can review this remark by watching Dr. Kadlec's testimony, specifically starting from 1:57:25 here, responding to Sen. Romney's question: Full Committee Hearing

We spoke to FEMA, and they told us that we are producing something like 160 million N95 masks a month, but that still doesn't equal 3.5 billion, so I just want to ask you, have you adjusted those numbers?

I would caution you that if you're citing projections in March, and we're sitting here in August, that you might want to get an August projection.What I'm telling you is that by the end—and this is all in the report that I issued today—by the end of September, we will have a Strategic National Stockpile that's very full.But look, we are at war.Let's make no mistake about that.This is a war against a deadly virus from China that looks like the Chinese Communist Party either let slip out of that country or had something to do with it, and in fighting that war, we are sparing no expense in terms of getting the weapons we need to fight it.⁴

The Trump administration has presented no evidence that the Chinese government intentionally spread the virus. Critics object to the term "China virus" as racist and political.

Defense Production Act

OK. Well, let's talk about the Defense Production Act.

Sure.

You issued a report just today about it.Why don't you tell me a little bit about what it is and how it's being used?

The Defense Production Act goes back to 1950, after World War II.During World War II, we had DPA-like authorities to mobilize the defense industrial base.Today's DPA has three main authorities to get stuff done.You've got Title I, which allows you to prioritize orders so that if a manufacturer of a critical piece of PPE needs something from the supply chain, they can grab it ahead of the line of some noncritical industries.That's a tremendously important tool.Title III is basically a funding mechanism to stand up the kinds of factories that we need in order to meet our PPE needs, our testing needs, the things we need for vaccines such as vials.And we've used that repeatedly, so Title III is very, very important.And the way that works in terms of spending things, sometimes it's just long-term purchase commitments; sometimes it's some grant money to stand up some investment first and then to produce, but the strategy behind all of this as we do this is to bring our medicines, our medical supplies and our medical equipment supply chains home to America.We must do that.We will beat this pandemic.We will beat it, but we cannot forget the lesson, the key lesson, which is we need to bring our pharma home and our equipment home. …

Right, I understand.A common refrain from critics has been that the DPA hasn't been used enough and that it wasn't used soon enough.What's your response to that?

So on the soon enough, that's counterfactual.If you look at the executive orders, they begin in March quite aggressively.We had six executive orders and four presidential memorandum [sic] where we were using it, so that's when that began.And in terms of aggressive enough, this again is counterfactual, and I think it reflects a misunderstanding of what the DPA actually can and should do.I think that in the Biden-Pelosi-Democrat world—

Well—

Hang on. You're supposed to go in and seize factories and take over production, but the DPA really doesn't entitle you to do that.Our strategy has been, basically, to go in and use it forcefully when we've had to, which primarily is the case in GM and 3M, and then let the rest of corporate America understand that if they don't do what they should do, we're coming after them, and that's been very effective. …

From the time that that action was taken, it was 17 days for that factory to be stood up.That has never been done in American industrial history.We put that factory up in 17 days using the miracle of repurposing the platform of General Motors for autos.This was just like World War II, when we took platforms for autos and turned them into tanks, but this was done in 17 days.

Well, we spoke with Ventec, and they said that they were already working on ramping up production without the DPA.

Nah, they were making 25 to 30 ventilators a week, and they had no hope of going to the kind of scale that we went.⁵

Ventec was producing more than 25 to 30 ventilators per week, according to an investigation conducted by the New York Times. General Motors and Ventec formed a partnership on March 19, the latter of which produces 200 per month, or 50 average per week. Ventec, on March 20, had allegedly already sped production to up to 1,000 ventilators per month. As discussions between the partners continued, and with GM's resources, they had planned to accomplish 20,000 per month. See: New York Times

I want to pivot—

That is a miracle.

I want to pivot a little bit and talk about masks for a second.

Timeline

Can we talk one thing about timing?I'd like to talk a little bit about this whole timing issue. …

The first major action that was taken on this was Jan. 31, which was when the president courageously pulled down the flights from China.And three days before, he'd already made that decision, and my task was to go into the Situation Room and present the case for taking down the flights.

Well, I don't really want to go there, only because I'd really like to focus on supply chain issues here.

But you'll want to listen to this, OK, because it tells you what we were doing in February.Do you want to hear that?

Yes, absolutely.

All right. Well, let me tell you what we were doing in February, because come Jan. 31, the president pulls the flights down.⁶

The proclamation to suspend entry of aliens coming from China went into effect February 2. See: Presidential Proclamations on Novel Coronavirus

Jan. 28, I had gone into the Situation Room, knowing he was going to do that, to make the case.The memo—I think you've seen the memo that I wrote, warning of a global pandemic, OK?In February, we weren't sure what was going to happen with the China virus.We didn't know how bad it was going to be, but privately, president's direction to me was prepare for the worst.I was working day and night with people over at BARDA [Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority] and other people in the bureaucracy, and we were getting ready, in that month, in February, we were getting ready to put out contracts for what would become the vaccine horse race.We were getting ready to put out contracts to buy Remdesivir for clinical trials and to buy enough Remdesivir for the American people.We were getting ready to put out contracts for things like vials and things like that.So all the work that we were doing in February laid the groundwork for the contracts that would be issued March, April, May, June, July and now August.These things don't happen overnight.

Well, let's focus in February.

Sure.

You wrote a memo here, and it was a request for immediate action, and it was on Feb. 9, and you said that action needed to be immediately undertaken, and "immediately" is twice in all caps, and you recommend halting the export of N95 masks and ramping up production of domestic N95 factories—

And what we did—

But neither of those things happened until April.

What we did there, working with HHS and BARDA, was we set in motion all of those contracts that would be signed.

But why did they take two months?

Well, I'll question your two months thing.The one you're seeing there say two months.There's other contracts that have been signed outside the scope of that, but I can assure you we were moving as early as the beginning of February, lining all this stuff up, and remember—now hang on.Just remember, Nancy Pelosi was still dancing in Chinatown without a mask saying that there was no problem.⁷

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was not "dancing" in Chinatown, but she did visit San Francisco's Chinatown on February 24, 2020 encouraging locals and tourists not to avoid going due to coronavirus concerns. Local shop-owners believed the downturn in visits was "racially motivated," according to a NBC Bay Area report. NBC Bay Area

I know you don't want to hear that on this program, but in February, there was this blissful ignorance.The two people that mattered most around here in February who knew that could be the contrary was the president himself and me, and his direction to me was crystal clear, "Get moving on this in case it's bad."And so history will show—and there's many more memos than the ones that got leaked, and shame on the leakers, that show that we were on top of this game, and everything that we did in February when we weren't sure what the virus was going to be in terms of degree of severity bore fruit in the later months.

But a week after this memo, you wrote another one, and you were still asking questions about why the exports weren't being halted.

The purpose of those memos were to continue to mobilize the bureaucracy, OK?I have an expression I call "Trump time," which is to say, "Move as quickly as possible."And the problem that we have had here in the White House, and every president has, is a bureaucracy of career bureaucrats who are set in their ways and don't know how to move in Trump time.But I'll tell you what: This whole vaccine thing, it's worth talking about the vaccine development, OK?

Yeah.

Here's what we did.

Well, hang on.I actually just want to pause for one second, though.

Sure.

Who's really in charge of the DPA and making those decisions, though?That's not the bureaucracy; that's the president, and he—

The president of the United States is in charge of the DPA, and we started that process on March 18—

Hang on. I just have one question. March 18, though—

—before the World Health Organization said we were in a pandemic. Before.

But March 18, that's weeks after you were warning about this, and I think he said something like that it would be used—

I'm not going with this narrative.What I'm trying to tell you and you're not listening is that we were working very hard to put in motion everything we did with the DPA as early as—the starting gun in this crisis was Jan. 31, when the president pulled down those flights, and we were working 24/7.I'm sitting on a weekend in my office in this building with three other guys; we're trying to get the ventilator thing done.We're talking in one day to 12, almost a dozen ventilator manufacturers.And guess what?No American was denied a ventilator, number one.⁸

According to a Guardian report, doctors across the U.S. were forced to develop ethical frameworks to decide who would get access to ventilators due to mass shortages. See: The Guardian

Number two, we went from in a shortage position now to being the export ventilator king because of the way we move in Trump time, so I'm not buying these criticisms.It's like, "You move too slow."What I'm trying to give you is information to the American public about what we were doing in February, which set up all the good things that happened in the later months.

The Challenges of Bringing Medical Manufacturing Back

… You have spoken about bringing medical manufacturing back to the U.S., and it's actually kind of become a bipartisan issue at this point.

Not kind of—it is a bipartisan issue, I believe, although the Democrats talk but don't walk the talk.

Do you think that it can really happen, as an economist?

It's already happening.Look, the president—and he's the only person who's ever stood up to China in the Oval Office.And what's been happening in the last three and a half years—and we've seen this—is supply chains moving back to America for a whole variety of things.What this China virus pandemic has done is shine a really bright light on the fact that we're dangerously dependent on the Chinese Communist Party for antibiotics, for all sorts of masks, equipment, and we know that they, in terms of times of crisis, will hoard that stuff.So yes, I think that we have a commitment now to bring that back.

But I'll tell you what: The worst thing we can do is forget what happened here.Joe Biden and Barack Obama, in their administration, had a wake-up call with the H1N1 virus, OK?What they should have done after that was on-shore all our N95 respirators, and instead, you know what they did?They sent them to Mexico and China so that they could buy them 3 cents less.

But that's interesting that you bring up H1N1.We have talked to some companies that ramped up during H1N1, and then they felt abandoned because there weren't guarantees of purchasing that product later, so is this—

They were abandoned, and I know who you talked to.

Is this administration committed to—

Yes

—guaranteeing a certain amount of orders for companies that are prepared to ramp up?

The whole strategy has to be long-term commitments from the administration, but that won't do it alone.So if you think about pharmaceuticals—this is really interesting.Right now the disadvantage we have in the pharmaceutical space is in traditional manufacturing, the three-stage process, it goes to the slave labor, the pollution havens and the tax havens, boom, out.The only way we get our cost advantage back is by bringing home and developing advanced and continuous manufacturing.That is a process where you do all three stages at once or at least two out of three that reduces the waste drain, that reduces the cost, and voila, we're competitive.We need to be innovative and competitive on the one hand, but we also have to have the commitment as a government for these long-term commitments. …

We were talking about the challenges of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.How can it happen?You're an economist, right?Prestige Ameritech has told us that they could buy a Chinese mask for less than the cost of materials for them, so isn't it just a numbers game?

Well, that's what China does; they dump products into our markets.That's how they stole all our jobs.Remember how during the 2000s—this was on Bush's watch, Obama and Biden—what China did was basically dump products into our markets, kill our factories.Seventy thousand factories we lost, 5 million manufacturing jobs, during that time.In order for us to bring our pharma home, we've got to do a bunch of things.The president just signed an essential medicines executive order just a couple of weeks ago.What does that do?It's pure Trump.It's "Buy American" so that Defense Department, Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services are directed to buy their pharmaceuticals from domestic manufacturers."Buy American" is a critical part of this administration.The second thing, which is pure Trump, is the deregulation portion.Now, don't let that scare Americans.We're not going to do anything dangerous.What this does is simply bring the FDA into a world where their regulatory processes have to work with these new advanced manufacturing processes.They're not built for that right now.And the third part of that is the innovation, which is to move advanced manufacturing forward.

You've got the "Buy American" portion of it; you've got the expenditures we're making with long-term commitments, 10 years, 15 years out, so these companies will have a firm commitment to it.We are also, with the Strategic National Stockpile, we have a smart stockpile this time.We're not only adding more materiel to the stockpile, but we're expanding its capacity by going first to the distributors to have them maintain reserve capacity.It's kind of like electric power plant notion, where you have some kind of spinning reserves that you can bring online.And then the same thing with the hospitals, so everybody holds more inventory.You do a first-in, first-out so the stuff remains fresh.So we're attacking this.What the Trump administration does is it attacks it like a businessperson would from multiple vectors of attack with the goal of having the jobs here, the factories here and Americans safe. …

Ventilators

So I want to go back to ventilators for a second.

Sure.

You mentioned really being involved in ventilators.

Yes.

We've been looking at one particular contract, the ventilator contract with Philips, and we understand that it was negotiated first under the Obama administration, and those ventilators that were ordered were never actually delivered to the SNS, and that contract was renegotiated—

Those were a prototype that were supposed to be very cheap ventilators that never got done because some company bought the company.Is that the one you're talking about?I don't want to— What I don't want to do is comment on stuff unless you give me very specific things.What I can say to you about—

The criticism has been that this administration is allowing taxpayers to pay five times more for what is functionally the same ventilator as the previous—

See, that's—

No, no. And this is coming from a congressional report, so—

Of course. It's a Democratic congressional report. It's pure—

But you're a negotiator, so I just want to ask you what really happened, because I know that you had a seat at the table, and I wanted to give you a chance to tell us.

Sure.The first thing that happened is the Democrats want to blame Donald J. Trump for the pandemic, and they don't want to have this election run on legitimate issues about what the American people want, which is the economy standing up to China and law and order in our cities.They want to basically make the pandemic, so they do letters like this.Let me tell you about ventilators.All ventilators are not created equal, right?You have some smaller portable ventilators, and then you have the Cadillac, General Electric $43,000 one, which will stay on through 14 days in an ICU unit.It lasts the whole 14 days without any change.And everywhere in between, you have variations on that theme.You can't compare the price of this ventilator with that ventilator without controlling for their functionality, OK?

So you're saying they're very different.

They're very different, yes.

OK, because the report says they function the same.

And so what I love about the GM Ventec one—and I went to the factory to actually visit it and look at it—is, to me, it's one of the most elegant designs.It runs about $15,000, but even that ventilator doesn't have the full functionality of the GE one.You'd love to have all GE ones, but at $43,000, that's expensive, and it also takes much longer to produce, so what we're trying to do across—it's kind of like a hedge portfolio that someone would have in their 401K, right?I think it's somewhere, at least, nine, 10, different types of producers, and they produce different ventilators with different functionalities.Look, memo to anybody reading a letter from Congress that's totally partisan.Guess what? That's partisan.

Can you tell me when you think those Philips ventilators will be delivered?

Which Philips—I don't know which ones you're talking about.I do know that Philips has been producing some ventilators along with— …

One criticism for this Philips contract is that Philips got several extensions, and so those ventilators aren't expected to be delivered until 2022.⁹

In response to written questions by the Associated Press, Philips said they have delivered 1,700 ventilators of the original 2014 contract.The company said the delays were due to "software development issues…” discovered during testing, and "FDA… clearance… which took longer than anticipated.”

I can't comment on the—to me, that's just garbage stuff.That's just typical Democratic B.S.They're playing politics with the lives of the American people.Stop that. Stop that.And so all I can tell you is we've become—

Well, it's taxpayer money, though. It's—

Yeah, but let's also be clear about one thing.When Gov. Cuomo, with his hair on fire, started screaming on national television that he needed 40,000 ventilators more than we had in the Strategic National Stockpile, he did tremendous damage to this country, because all the 49 other states started getting crazy about ventilators, and there was real fear on the part of the American people.¹⁰

Early in the pandemic, Andrew Cuomo told NBC's Lester Holt that experts had predicted New York would need "40,000 ICU beds with ventilators." See: NBC News

Guess what? Guess what?We are now the ventilator king of the world.We're shipping ventilators not just for export for money, but we're giving them to our friends and allies.¹¹

ProPublica in July reported that the U.S. had donated thousands to ventilators to foreign countries. See: ProPublica

You don't think there's an urgency for it?

Is what?

You don't think there's an urgency for these orders to be delivered before 2022?

These orders?No. We're in great shape with ventilators.And it's not clear to me that we haven't got some now.I don't know the particulars of the con—you're just sitting there with papers saying, "Philips, Philips, Philips," and that's not fair to me.

I'm sorry.This is the invoice that was sent, if you want to look at it.It's from the congressional report, but it is addressed to you.

I will not go there.What I would do, if you want, is next time you want to do an interview with me, have the courtesy of giving me the material to study beforehand, because that's just a cheap shot."Oh, here's the—" …

No, no, no, not a cheap shot at all.I was asking to explain what really happened—

Cheap shot.

—because there's been a lot of criticism, and I was giving you a chance to tell us what really happened.

But you're dwelling on something that's tiny in the scheme of things, and that's why I always worry about these kind of interviews, because if the American people really want to know what's happening, it's not what may or may not be happening with a single contract with Philips, because that's just pure political B.S., OK?That's all you're doing here.You want to play that game and put it on the air, fine.But put this on the air: That's just B.S.There's a lot of other things that the American people need to know about, which I've shared with you in the course of this interview, so I'll say the same thing I said to 60 Minutes.If you want to put stuff like that in there, air the whole interview so people can see the whole thing. …

I'm serious about that.You do stuff like that, and I want the whole interview up on the web.Let's do that.You shouldn't have anything to fear from that.Let's do it.

No—

FRONTLINE actually does have a Transparency Project, and if you're saying you're going to sit here and answer our questions, then I will talk to our executive producer about putting this whole thing on.

Yeah.

Put it on. …

I just want to get my papers straight.Thank you so much.I really appreciate you staying.

Well, I do enjoy watching your program.I've watched you for decades, I think, but there's always the concern about fairness, but we'll see what happens.

You famously accused China of nationalizing 3M, so we wanted to ask you where that came from.¹²

In a Fox News segment from February, Navarro said China had effectively nationalized 3M to prevent its sending any material to the United States. See: Fox Business

Well, that's what they did.What China— What the Chinese Communist Party, to be clear, did was restrict 3M from exporting their N95 masks outside of China to America.That was done, OK?And the bigger 3M issue, which I think is interesting, goes to the problem that I call the Vatican problem.There's too many American multinational corporations who think they're the Vatican; they're their own separate nation, where they have clients in America, in China, all over the world, either producing or consuming, and from their perspective as executives, their role is to balance all of those interests rather than serve the American nation in time of need.And so the problem we had with 3M, which required a Defense Production Act order, was that they were simultaneously trying to play some games with where their masks were going.At the same time, they were in a vise put on them by the Chinese Communist Party, so we had to handle those problems in two different ways.

The first way was to use the DPA to order them to give us an allotment of masks, and they were able to dramatically both increase the allotment of existing capacity but also stand up new capacity.The second— The other problem we had where the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, was putting the screws to 3M is we handled that through diplomacy very successfully.I would say that that was a beautiful case of how this administration works, where we came, again, a multi-vector attack.

Well, we spoke to 3M, and they completely disagree that it was nationalization.They said that the Chinese government requested preference and a higher degree of engagement in addressing the orders for everything we were shipping out of the Shanghai facility—

Memo to FRONTLINE here: This is why we had to do the DPA order on them.They are the slipperiest people that I’ve dealt with in this White House in terms of getting to yes on things, so if they're spinning it that way, they can go ahead and spin it, but I'm telling you flat out that the Chinese Communist Party, both at the federal level and at the local level, I think it was in Shanghai, was prohibiting those masks from leaving China.¹³

Chinese officials did delay mask and ventilator exports in April after quality complaints from Europe, The New York Times reported. Delays were tied to a new inspection policy. See: New York Times

And we had—no, we had to deal with that diplomatically, and we had to deal with it with the DPA, and I'm telling you, I don't care what 3M says, that's what happened.¹⁴

A 3M executive told the AP: "What did happen is the Shanghai municipal government came to 3M and requested preference and a higher degree of engagement in addressing the orders for everything that we were shipping out of the Shanghai facility."

But is that different than the functions of the DPA that say that we can block exports of masks from our country?

What that does is it underscores with an exclamation point why we have to have this production here, why we have to have it here.And we've been very, very good about working with other countries of the world in terms of sharing what there is to make sure people stay alive.But the fact of the matter is, over 80 countries put export restrictions of some kind on the rest of the world, and this is a dog-eat-dog world when it's a pandemic, and that's what we need to understand.And that's why I get back to this president, Donald J. Trump, toughest president we've ever had since Ronald Reagan, and he's handling this with a combination of toughness using the DPA, diplomacy behind the scenes, and our mission is to protect the American people from the China virus, and that's what happened with 3M.And I don't care what else you say they said; I've told you what happened.

Convincing American Companies to Come Back

How are you going to convince American companies to come back from China?

Well, we don't have to convince them to come back from China.China took a fork in the road first in 2008, when they overplayed their hand in this whole hide-your-capabilities, bide-your-time strategy, going back to Deng Xiaoping.They threw that in the garbage can, and they started getting really aggressive with the rest of the world.Xi Jìnpíng comes along, and he's doing just crazy stuff like this Civil-Military Fusion.Have you heard of this?Do you know what this doctrine is?

Well—

Do you know what that is?Civil-Military Fusion is a doctrine that says that anything a company has, foreign or domestic, on Chinese soil, in terms of data, trade secrets, whatever, must be given on demand to the Chinese Communist Party.And that is the single most important thing that's chilling new investment in the People's Republic of China.Yeah, people are coming back in droves to this country because of President Trump's policies and because they're afraid of the Chinese Communist Party.

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