China and the border

The money trail behind the Honduran caravan may in part lead to China. Not only has Vice President Mike Pence fingered Venezuela as bankrolling the Honduran migrant caravan, he has also implicated China. In his speech October 4th speech at the Hudson Institute, Pence laid out the Trump administration’s new China policy -- aimed at pushing back against, “an arsenal of policies inconsistent with free and fair trade, including tariffs, quotas, currency manipulation, forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and industrial subsidies that are handed out like candy to foreign investment.” He then targeted specific regions and nations.

Within our own hemisphere, Beijing has extended a lifeline to the corrupt and incompetent Maduro regime in Venezuela that’s been oppressing its own people. They pledged $5 billion in questionable loans to be repaid with oil. China is also that country’s single largest creditor, saddling the Venezuelan people with more than $50 billion in debt, even as their democracy vanishes. Beijing is also impacting some nations’ politics by providing direct support to parties and candidates who promise to accommodate China’s strategic objectives. He then accused the Chinese of “meddling in America’s democracy,” through a full-fledged PR and propaganda program. “These and other actions, taken as a whole, constitute an intensifying effort to shift American public opinion and policy away from the ‘America First’ leadership of President Donald Trump. His speech is well worth reading. Televising and ugly border confrontation on the eve of the election may be viewed as a means to help elect a Democratic House of Representatives, focused on impeaching Present Trump and derailing his agenda. Such would appear to be a nice return for China on its multi-billion dollar Venezuelan investment.