Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said in a new interview that President Trump Donald John TrumpBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Romney: 'Unthinkable and unacceptable' to not commit to peaceful transition of power Two Louisville police officers shot amid Breonna Taylor grand jury protests MORE should continue his efforts to put pressure on China's economy with tariffs, accusing Beijing of waging "economic war" on the U.S.

The former Breitbart News chief told Bloomberg that it is the U.S.'s job to shut China out of every major market as a way to pressure the Chinese government into bowing to U.S. demands on trade practices like intellectual property theft

"He has to go all the way; it’s not a trade war, it’s an economic war they’ve been running against the West," Bannon said Friday, according to Bloomberg. "You cut off the access to the capital markets and you cut off the access to technology, they fold immediately."

ADVERTISEMENT

The stakes, Bannon said, are no less than a fundamental restructuring of China's economy so that it can do business with the U.S. and other Western nations.

"I don’t think Trump backs off for a second" from the dispute, which "is about fundamentally changing the Chinese economy so they can work with the free market economies of the West," Bannon told Bloomberg.

His remarks come just a day after the president indicated that a trade agreement with China was unlikely to come in the near future, despite months of negotiations that had looked for much of 2019 to be nearing an agreement on a multitude of issues.

"I think they probably wish they made the deal that they had on the table before they tried to renegotiate it," Trump said Monday. "We're not ready to make a deal. And we're taking in tens of billions of dollars of tariffs, and that number could go up very, very substantially, very easily."

Those talks broke down weeks ago, however, with U.S. officials accusing Chinese negotiators of walking back several provisions the two parties had previously agreed upon.

The Trump administration has indicated that another $300 billion in Chinese products could soon be subject to tariffs if a deal is not reached.