“The devaluations of their currencies by China and Japan and many, many other countries, and we don’t do it because we don’t play the game.”
“We don’t win at trade, China, everybody, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, India, name the country. Anybody we do business with beats us. We don’t win at trade.”
“They [Japan] have cars coming in by the millions and we sell practically nothing. When Japan thinks we mean it, they’ll stop playing around with the yen. They’re almost as good as China.”
Trump has certainly made an impact with his aggressive approach throughout the course of the campaign. Overall, Trump’s rhetoric regarding trade and the United State’s relationship with China appears narrow, one-sided, and overly simplistic. Though one of his most rhetorical strategies throughout the campaign has been his ability to speak at a level his target audience is going to be able to understand and comprehend. Nevertheless, though he presents his audience with a rhetoric that appears to make sense, his explanations and justifications regarding China and trade policy are over-simplified and ‘stuck in a time warp,’ as defined by Washington Post.
Trump’s rhetoric created a symbolic world “in which the United States never wins at trade and is flooded by imports because China and Japan keep their currencies artificially low.” By describing the US in such terms, Trump is creating a rhetorical situation that allows the opportunity for his audiences to agree with his policies – because it makes perfect sense, right?
I agree with you that Trump is over-simplistic when he is speaking about trade; Trump over-simplifies any topic he is talking about. This is a good strategy because he is able to communicate to larger audience, but I think it has some downfalls. One shortcoming I notice when I see how simply Donald Trump communicates is the fact that because he is constantly speaking at a fifth grade reading level, it makes him appear less educated than he actually is; at least it does to educated people. Speaking so simply also can appear as a negative because Trump runs out of words. There are only so many words in a fifth grade reader’s vocabulary and you will run out of them very quickly. This results in him running in circles and repeating statements over and over again, which again makes him look uneducated. For some it may appear like this is a good rhetorical strategy, but for those of us that want quality over quantity, we see straight through it.
I agree that Trump has made a huge impact with his aggressive rhetorical style. His rhetoric is narrow and over simplistic. However, this is perfect for Trump’s target audience. Some of Trumps claims against China and Japan are valid, but voter must take into consideration that his plan of action would be ineffective to solve US/China trade issues.