Bolton calls Trump's tariff plan 'shock therapy' for China

President Trump’s incoming national security adviser John Bolton said Trump is giving China some “shock therapy” with his controversial plan to slap tariffs on its goods.

“This could be a little shock therapy, get their attention, and hopefully it will have a good impact,” Bolton, the hardliner tapped by Trump to replace H.R. McMaster in the key national security post, said on the John Catsimatidis AM 970 radio show.

Trump announced last week that he would impose tariffs on $60 billion in goods entering the United States, which he said are designed to punish the Chinese for unfair trade practices.

China has said it will retaliate with its own tariffs on American products.

“I don’t think anybody is looking to have a trade war,” Bolton said.

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Trump said the tariffs were meant to combat China’s infringement of U.S. companies’ copyrights and patents, which he says costs the American firms billions each year.

“The Chinese have stolen intellectual property, patent information, copyrights, trademarks, business secrets. They just take the information and build their own. And that’s really, it’s theft. There’s no other description of it,” Bolton said in the radio interview aired Sunday.

“The United States lives by these agreements...All we’re asking is for the Chinese to do the same.”

But Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, said the tariff plan will end up hurting American farmers, whose goods could face tariffs to enter China.

“Nobody wins in a trade war,” she said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The Chinese plan to retaliate with tariffs on American porn and soybeans, with $14 billion worth of American soybeans sold to China in 2016.

“We will see significant impact, very detrimental impact not just in Iowa, but across the Midwest as well,” Ernst said.