Bannon: For Capitalism To Beat Socialism, Chinese Corruption Must Be Defeated
Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist who helped lead Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, sat down with Shaun Hair, the executive editor of The Western Journal, to discuss immigration, the 2020 election and China.
The transcript of this portion of the interview has been edited for clarity and readability.
Hair: Speaking of socialism, it’s clear the left is leaning that way. Leaning may be too soft of a word. Do you think that issue will cost them?
Bannon: Millennials under 30 at 56 percent, I think the number is, agree with socialism. Here’s what we have to do. We have to get capitalism that works. Remember, people under 30 years old, why do they want socialism? Because they’re nothing but Russian serfs.
Let’s be brutally frank about the capitalism we have today. People under 30 don’t own anything, and they’re not going to own anything. They’re 30 percent behind where their parents are in income at the same stage in their life. They don’t have the ability to save. Remember, in the bailout of 2008, the four and a half trillion dollars that the Federal Reserve blew into the system in liquidity to stop deflation and to save the banks and the hedge funds was a conscious decision. There’s a corollary to that. When you do that, when you go to essentially negative interest rates or low interest rates, remember that the people that get blown out are pensioners and people saving. Your savings account goes to zero. Your checking account goes to zero. You have no way, no ability to save or to build any sort of capital, so that’s why you have real estate. But if you don’t own real estate and you don’t own stocks — which most people under 30 didn’t — you’re the devil catching the hindmost.
We have to have a participatory capitalism.
Look, I’m a populist and an economic nationalist. As I tell the donors and others, the choice is not between Donald Trump or Steve Bannon’s populism or nationalism, and Paul Ryan and the Heritage Foundation. That is something that the Republican party and the conservatives are kind of drifting along. It’s between this and [New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. It’s between this and Elizabeth Warren. It’s between this and Bernie Sanders.
Because that’s what’s coming.
Every piece of data we have says that socialism and more of the free stuff is coming because the system that we have today is not filtering down and working for working class people and particularly for millennials. And we have to change that.
We have to make this a more participatory capitalism.
Hair: How do you do that?
Bannon: I think that, number one, we’re not going to do this until we break the back of this economic war for China. The simple, basic thing you can do is bring high value-added manufacturing jobs here to the United States.
That is going to take tariffs, and that is going to take non-tariff barriers.
This wild concept of free trade doesn’t work when you’re against a totalitarian, mercantilist system. And that’s what we have in China. We have a totalitarian, mercantilist surveillance state — one of the most dictatorial in mankind’s history — that has totally closed the market. With Made in China 2025, One Belt One Road and 5G Rollout, they are trying to become a hegemonic manufacturing power.
We have allowed Wall Street and the global corporations to deindustrialize this country.
The step one — and this is what Trump is doing whether it’s in the NAFTA deal or this engagement now with the economic war with China — the simple, most important thing we do is bring the supply chain back to the West. And that is going to take tariffs.
I deal with manufacturing groups. The Hindu Republican Coalition had us out to Chicago three, four weeks ago for an entire day with 1,400 Hindu Americans in the PCB manufacturing business that do not just want Trump on these temporary [tariffs]. They want permanent tariffs to bring the PCB business back.
I’m a big believer in tariffs. I think tariffs work. And we have to bring the manufacturing base back. We bring the manufacturing base back, you’re going to have high value added jobs that are going to start to create jobs for young people. Jobs that you can build a family around. Jobs you can get a medical plan around. Jobs you can have kids around.
Hair: Yeah, a lot of the historical discussion around tariffs depends on an otherwise good faith player. And you’re not dealing with that with China.
Bannon: Not just a good faith player. I mean this is not about the Chinese people. The Chinese people are the most decent, hard working people; they are amazing.
You see in Hong Kong. This is about a radical group of the Chinese Communist Party — one of the most dangerous groups that’s ever been around — and you see in Hong Kong, where the majority of those original protesters were Christian kids that are capitalist. And you see they’re tear gassed, the bullets are fired on them, they’re beaten by police. They are fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and capitalism.
This is 1775 all over again.
I tell people, if you want to see the way the Chinese communists play, look what they’re doing in Hong Kong and look what they’ve done to the heartland of this country.
To me, this is a black and white issue, and it’s one that has got to be addressed.
And Trump — against Wall Street, against the corporate powers, against the Democratic Party — is leading the charge here and I think it’s one that’s going to define this country for 30 or 40 years.
The Western Journal divided the above interview into three parts. The above transcript is part 3 of 3. You can watch the interview in its entirety here.
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