Haley calls Biden Cabinet member trips to China ‘embarrassing’

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Sunday that recent trips by President Biden's Cabinet members to China are “embarrassing” and a way to appease the country. 

“For Biden to realize, you don’t send Cabinet members over to China to appease them,” Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview on CNN’s “State of The Union.” “You start getting serious with China and say we’re not going to put up with it. They keep sending different Cabinet officials over...and it’s embarrassing.”

Haley’s comments follow recent trips to China by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Jane in an effort to improve relations with China. 

“You sent Raimondo right after she got hacked, her emails got hacked by the Chinese,” Haley said, in reference to Raimondo’s email being a part of Chinese hackers’ breach in July. 

“You sent all of these Cabinet officials over after the Chinese spy balloon went over our country?” Haley continued. “They are putting a Chinese spy base up in…Cuba, off the coast of Florida and don’t wait for the fact that they are going to be sending Chinese military troopers there. What are we doing appeasing China instead?” 

Tensions between the U.S. and China have since risen on various issues, including technology, espionage, economic competition, and military power. Multiple close military confrontations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait have also contributed to these tensions, in addition to a surveillance balloon incident last February and recent reports that China has operated a spy base in Cuba since 2019. 

“We should say you’re [China] not buying any more U.S. soil and we’re going to take back what you’ve already bought. We’re gonna go and make sure that we don’t have Chinese infiltration in our universities because our universities are going to have to pick between Chinese money or American money, we’re going to end all normal trade relations with China until they stop killing Americans with fentanyl. And then we’re going to build up our military because China now has the strongest naval fleet in the world.”