Hours after Donald Trump ramped up trade tensions with China by inflicting higher tariffs on the country’s imports, Lou Dobbs, the conservative Fox Business Network anchor, led his evening broadcast by showering praise on the move.
“For far too long communist China has been cheating the United States on trade,” he said. “President Trump has made it clear: the failure of previous presidents to aggressively represent US interests in foreign policy and economic policy has ended, and president Trump made believers out of the Chinese today,” he added.
Mr Dobbs is one of Mr Trump’s favourite pundits because of his hardline views on trade and immigration, and his predilection for conspiracy theories. His satisfaction with the president’s stance on trade reflects the glee among hawks in Washington at the direction of the negotiations with Beijing, even as the stand-off has sounded alarm bells for the global economy.