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WH Adviser: China Knew What Was Coming, Stockpiled Masks Before World Learned COVID Dangers

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In an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Monday, White House trade adviser and China hawk Peter Navarro said Beijing had “vacuumed up” masks and personal protective equipment before the communist country let the world know how dangerous the coronavirus is.

During the appearance, Navarro also said that China was exporting low-quality antibody tests.

“That’s where, perhaps, we can find people who are immune, that can be in the workplace in a more safe environment. But we can’t have China, for example, bringing in those fake tests and counterfeit tests, because that’s going to be very disruptive,” Navarro said, according to Reuters.

“There’s a lot of these antibody tests coming in from China now that are low quality, false readings and things like that,” Navarro told “Fox & Friends.”

Check out the “Fox & Friends” video here.

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Navarro also said when it came to containing the spread of the coronavirus, “they hid it for six weeks.”

“They could have contained it in Wuhan,” he said (about the 3:50 mark on the video).

“They vacuumed up the world for personal protective equipment — over 2 billion masks — depriving public health care workers around the world from the defenses they need, and today, China’s profiteering, basically, from this situation.”

China has rejected any White House claims it’s profiteered off of the virus or covered it up.

Is China responsible for the spread of the coronavirus?

Chinese officials have chided U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by saying he should “stop playing the political game” and to “better save energy on saving lives,” according to Reuters.

It’s worth noting that Navarro is a major hard-liner on China who was picked to join the Trump administration as a trade adviser precisely because of his adversarial view toward Beijing.

However, reports of Beijing “vacuum[ing] up” PPE aren’t exactly new and aren’t necessarily disputed, either.

One story out of Australia described a real estate firm with links to the Chinese government literally dropping all work to find as much PPE as it could in the country and ship it back to China during the height of the Wuhan crisis.

“The Chinese Communist Party basically inflicted this virus on the world,” Navarro said about the 4:40 mark of the video. “And we should never forget that here in America.”

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Beijing’s masters have essentially been on a demented four-month quest to prove everything Peter Navarro has been saying about them right.

They’ve made the World Health Organization look like a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of China, lied about virtually everything COVID-related there is to lie about and yet insist to be taken at face value.

In the process, they’ve emphasized the importance of the United States keeping its supply chain close to home — or, at the very least, very diversified — and of treating Beijing as an adversary, not as a friend or even a grudging partner.

Few people in the Trump administration has seen their stock rise so much in the past few months as Navarro. That wasn’t particularly hard, given the fact that Navarro’s protectionism had him regarded as a fringe economist, but his view of China as a bad actor on trade has proven prophetic.

The accuracy of Navarro’s statements on Monday will play out in the history books, both in terms of China having “vacuumed up” that PPE before the country notified the WHO of the real danger of the coronavirus.

However, I wouldn’t doubt him — not with what we know now.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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