The Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis said on Sunday he would aim to revoke China’s permanent normal trade relations status if he won the White House next year.
“I favor doing that,” DeSantis told Fox News.
“I think we probably need Congress but I would take executive action as appropriate to be able to move us in that direction.”
The Senate voted in 2000 to grant that status to China as it prepared to join the World Trade Organization. Any step to remove it would also need congressional approval. The status is a legal designation in the US for free trade with a foreign nation.
US-China relations have been tense for years over issues including Taiwan, US export bans on advanced technologies, China’s state-led industrial policies, human rights issues, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and trade tariffs.
Washington has been trying to repair ties between the world’s two biggest economies.
Completing a four-day Beijing visit this weekend, the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said this weekend her meetings with senior Chinese officials in recent days were “direct” and “productive”, helping stabilize an often rocky relationship.
DeSantis called China “the No 1 geopolitical threat this country faces”.
Donald Trump, the clear leader of the Republican field with DeSantis a distant second, has said he would give China 48 hours to get out of what sources familiar with the matter say is a Chinese spy facility in Cuba, 90 miles (145km) off the US coast.
English (US)