War Room’s Steve Bannon talked with author Christopher Leonard about the decline of US industrialization, how it’s tied to China, and its membership in the WTO.
“You’ve been doing research in something that’s very relevant to the day. This whole President Trump trying to reorganize the world’s commercial kind of system,” Bannon said.
“But the United States is so far gone as far as an advanced industrial power, it’s not gonna not just be easy, it’ll be impossible to bring the type of manufacturing that you want back here,” Bannon said of comments made to him.
“I’ve been working on a book about the defense industry really hardcore, full-time for about a year and a half or a couple of years now. And I’m very concerned about what you just talked about,” Leonard said.
“All wars are wars of attrition. That’s what they always turn into,” Leonard said of what a retired army Colonel told him.
Leonard explained that the decline of American industrialization and China’s membership in the WTO has posed a threat to the national security of the United States.
“In my mind, one of the most important stories, if not the most important story, is the deindustrialization of the United States over the last 40 years, accelerated after China joined the WTO in 2001. And that has grave, grave consequences for our national security,” Leonard said.
“We won the World War because of the power of our manufacturing,” Leonard said.
“We were the arsenal of Democracy,” Bannon said.
“And how we exist right now today is that we have lost the manufacturing ecosystem that we had in 1940 and going all the way back really to 1900,” Leonard said of the US.
“When you are a manufacturing power in the way that China is today you don’t just have factories. You’ve got all these attendant people that work around it. The engineers, the tool producers, the guys and gals who work on the manufacturing line,” Leonard continued.
“How did the essentially the greatest generation as leaders allow our greatest power, the manufacturing hegemon superpower, to just leave?” Bannon asked.
“This is essentially what you are studying. How that happened,” Bannon commented.
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