From Tuesday's GOP debate:
ROSE: ... We also know here that there has been a paradigm shift in the world economic order. We know about China and we know about India.
Here is our next clip and we will respond from that. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROMNEY: I will label China as it is, a currency manipulator. And I will go after them for stealing our intellectual property. And they will recognize that if they cheat, there is a price to pay. I certainly don't want a trade war with anybody. We are going to have a trade war, but we can't have a trade surrender either.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSE: Karen.
TUMULTY: Governor Huntsman, you were also ambassador to China. And you say that this would risk a trade war. But if China is indeed keeping its currency low, that means that everything they sell in this country is artificially cheap and everything that our companies tried to sell in China is artificially expensive.
So what do you say to people who ask, aren't we already in a trade war with China?
HUNTSMAN: Well, first of all, I don't subscribe to the Don Trump school or the Mitt Romney school of international trade. I don't want to find ourselves in a trade war. With respect to China, if you start slapping penalties on them based on countervailing duties, you are going to get the same thing in return because what they are going to say, because of quantitative easing part one and part two, you are doing a similar thing to your currency.
And then you're going to find yourself in a trade war very, very quickly. And what does that do? That disadvantages our small businesses. It disadvantages our exporters. It disadvantages our agricultural producers.
So I say for the first and the second largest economies in the world, we have no choice. We have to find common ground. We have to, of course, use our trade laws and use them very, very aggressively.
But at the end of the day, we have got to find more market opening measures. We have got to get more governors from this country together with governors from provinces of China, mayors together with mayors, and exploit the opportunities that exist for exporters.
That is a job creator in this country. It is a huge job creator. And we have to get used to the fact that as far as the eye can see into the 21st Century, it's going to be the United States and China on the world stage.
TUMULTY: You know, Governor Romney, this issue does carry a lot of resonance, especially in the states like New Hampshire, which, as you probably know, has lost a greater percentage of its manufacturing jobs to China than any other state.
But voters have heard candidates talked tough on China before. George W. Bush did it, Barack Obama did it, only to see that once elected, the president takes a much more cautious approach because of the complexity of the relationship and the fact that this is our biggest creditor.
Why should voters believe that you would be any different?
ROMNEY: I'm afraid that people who have looked at this in the past have been played like a fiddle by the Chinese. And the Chinese are smiling all the way to the bank, taking our currency and taking our jobs and taking a lot of our future. And I am not willing to let that happen.
I'm in this race to try to get America to make sure we're strong again and we're creating jobs where the best place in the world to be middle class again. And for that to happen, we have to call cheating for what it is.
And people say, we might have a trade war with China. Well, now, think about that.
We by this much stuff from China, they buy that much stuff from us. You think they want to have a trade war?
I mean, this is a time when we are being hollowed out by China, that is artificially holding down their prices, as you just said a moment ago, and that's having a massive impact on jobs here. It is the wrong course for us.
When people have pursued unfair trade practices, you have to have a president that will take action. And on day one, I have indicated, day one, I will issue an executive order identifying China as a currency manipulator. We'll bring an action against them in front of the WTO for manipulating their currency, and we will go after them. If you are not willing to stand up to China, you will get run over by China, and that's what's happened for 20 years.
