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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz defended the time he spent in China as a teacher and organising student exchanges with the country, saying it helped him “understand the world”, during his vice-presidential debate with US senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.
He said that if Donald Trump had visited China, the ex-president would have stopped “praising Xi Jinping” – adding that he also “wouldn’t start a trade war that he ends up losing”.
But he was defensive over reports that he misleadingly claimed he was in Hong Kong during the turbulence surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, saying that “I got there that summer and misspoke on this.”
Vance says it’s “surprising” to hear him praising Biden, “but the one thing that Joe Biden did is he continued some of the Trump tariffs that protected American manufacturing jobs”.
“It’s the one issue where Kamala Harris has run away from Joe Biden’s record. Think about this, if you’re trying to employ slave labourers in China at US$3 a day, you’re going to do that and undercut the wages of American workers unless our country stands up for itself and says, ‘You’re not accessing our markets, unless you’re paying middle class Americans a fair wage.’”
More from our coverage of the election
– Vance vs Walz: US VP debate pits hillbilly energy against ‘Minnesota nice’
– Nato’s new chief plays down fears of a potential Trump election victory
– US dockworkers strike, threatening economic disruption before presidential election
– Harris vs. Trump: Asia counts the cost of climate in US presidential polls
– Trump’s planned China tariff ‘damage’ could last through 2040
Reporting by Mark Magnier in New York and Igor Patrick and Khushboo Razdan in Washington