Peter Navarro: This Is A War That China Started By Spawning The Virus, By Hiding The Virus, Hoarding PPE

NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: So are some of these states particularly Georgia, where they still have a high number of cases moving too soon? Let’s raise that right now with Peter Navarro, of course, the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director.
 
Peter, good to have you.
 
PETER NAVARRO, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF TRADE AND MANUFACTURING POLICY: Good morning, Neil.
 
CAVUTO: What do you think of Georgia’s moves? The president who’s open to states getting back to business was concerned that Georgia was moving a little ahead of its skis. Do you agree with that?
 
NAVARRO: Neil, I like to stay in my lane and Vice President Pence who’s doing a great job on the Task Force setting out the guidelines, I’ll let them speak to that. But the one value add I might have to this is that talk with the American people now about the calculus. We know for a fact that the virus kills directly.
 
We know for a fact that shutting down our economy has destroyed jobs. It’s cost enormous stock market wealth loss, which goes into pension funds. We know that it’s doing tremendous economic damage.
 
But the more subtle problem, which is a serious problem that comes into the calculus, Neil, is the fact that economic disruptions kill as well. We learned that when China wiped out a lot of their factories in the Midwest, we saw dramatic rise in suicide rates, death to opioids, death to alcoholism, death to co-morbidity increases in things like diabetes.
 
We also saw a sharp blow from the China shock then to the family structure. We saw more divorces. We saw more children in poverty. So, when the president has been grappling with this whole issue of when to get the economy back, it’s a decision that no president should have to make. It’s probably the toughest decision any president has to make. But the people, themselves, boots on the ground now are understanding this tension between the death and destruction that the China virus can cause directly, and the death and destruction the China virus can cause indirectly by shutting down our economy.
 
So, that’s -- that’s -- that’s the big picture here, Neil. And we’re struggling with that. But we’re learning as a people how to fight this virus. This is a war. It’s a war that China started by spawning the virus, by hiding the virus, by hoarding personal protective equipment during the time it hid the virus.
 
And now it’s ironic, in my view, disgusting that they’re profiteering from that. So, this is -- that’s the big picture as I see it, Neil.
 
CAVUTO: Let me ask you about the China part of that, Peter. Could I ask you about the China part of that?
 
NAVARRO: Sure.
 
CAVUTO: Because you have long been very critical of China even of the trade talks, they had to verify everything they did and were promising. I’m just wondering now, they made a lot of commitments to the administration and to the American people about buying a lot more goods from us.
 
But seeing as they misrepresented the seriousness of coronavirus in their country and might have had some help and assistance in that regard, do you trust them to make good on trade promises they made to you and to us?
 
NAVARRO: Neil, one of the most important documents that got issued this year is the recent Pew Research Poll. Its amazing poll shows that over 90 percent of Americans now believe that China’s a threat. Over 70 percent of Americans across party lines have an unfavorable view of China.
 
They are concerned about jobs, the trade deficit, the environment, human rights and the military. So, if you ask me, the author of “Death by China” and “The Coming China Wars” whether I trust China, I would simply say, the American people no longer trust China. And there’s something that I think the Chinese --
 
CAVUTO: So, are they going to make, Peter? And they going to make good on the promises they made to you --
 
NAVARRO: On the trade deal, well, we’ll certainly --
 
(CROSSTALK)
 
CAVUTO: -- American people, do you worry about that?
 
NAVARRO: Let’s look at the promises they made. They’ve agreed to buy a tremendous amount of our agricultural products. It’s curious that they’re now buying a lot Brazilian soybeans.
 
We’re watching that carefully. They also promised to stop all this intellectual property theft and counterfeiting. But we’re being inundated now with counterfeit tests for antibodies and other things. And it’s -- so, do I trust the Chinese? No.
 
Let me give the, there’s something that China would call the four kills. I think it’s worth going over because the Chinese effectively declared war. They spawned that virus. The most likely explanation is it came out of a biological weapons lab, probably by accident, but who knows?  
 
But more importantly, we know they knowingly hid that virus, Neil, for six weeks. That’s the second kill because during that time, hundreds of thousands of Wuhanians and other Chinese flew to places like New York and Detroit and all around and Milan, all around the world, effectively seeding the planet with this Wuhan virus.
 
And it just, if they had simply been honest, honest with the world, they could have contained it within Wuhan. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation. That’s the second kill.
 
The third kill and China’s own customs data, Neil, show this -- we saw while they were hiding the virus from the world, they went out and vacuumed up all the PPE around the world, two billion masks they bought alone. And they took it from countries in Europe, South America, the United States.
 
And so when the people, the nurses, the brave nurses and doctors on the frontlines in New York or Chicago or Detroit or New Orleans needed PPE, part of the reason they didn’t have it is because of that third kill. The Chinese had basically vacuumed that up.
 
And now, the fourth kill is that they’re hoarding that and using that PPE as a weapon in their soft power to project it and to profiteer. I mean, we’re seeing, Neil, these are 30, 40-cent masks, 50-cent masks at retail usually, and they’re selling them, they’re coming to the hospitals here for $7 and $8.
 
And, so how do we trust the Chinese?