CHINA/CORONAVIRUS/COVID-19/JOHN BOLTON/MEDIA/TARIFFS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Bolton never told me to do tariffs on China. Bolton never thought you could get any tariffs done on China. Bolton has no economic sense. Bolton never thought you could get tariffs on China. They paid us billions of dollars. I gave our farmers $12 billion and $16 billion dollars out of tariffs I took in from China, which were much more than that. You understand? Because they were targeted… Nobody thought you could make a deal like that. Because we got the deal, and we got the tariffs. But since we got hit with the virus, I have a very different perspective on China. Very different perspective. And I view it very differently. But nobody has been tough on China like I am.”
-Donald Trump in a June 17, 2020 interview as quoted by WSJ Staff, “Transcript of President Trump’s Interview With The Wall Street Journal,” wsj.com, June 18, 2020