Joe Biden held a bipartisan meeting with four U.S. senators in the Oval Office Thursday morning on infrastructure. During the meeting, Biden spoke to reporters about his two-hour long phone call last night with Communist China President Xi Jinping.
“If we don’t get moving they’re going to eat our lunch. They have major, major new initiatives on rail and they already have rail that goes 225 miles an hour with ease. They’re working, they’re working very hard to do what I think we’re gonna have to do. And I think the automobile industry is already there and so is labor, they’re gonna, they’re working very hard to try to move into a position where they end up being the source of a, of a new way in which to power automobiles (Biden laughs) um which they’re going to invest a lot of money. They’re investing billions of dollars in dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things. We just have to step up…”
Transcribed by TGP.
President Biden on China: “Last night I was on the phone for two straight hours with Xi Jinping…if we don’t get moving they’re going to eat our lunch.” pic.twitter.com/Slog8wdyyr
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 11, 2021
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Two years ago when President Trump was playing hardball with China on trade, then-presidential candidate Biden totally dismissed the communist Chinese threat to the United States saying at a campaign stop in Iowa City, Iowa on May 2, 2019:
“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man. They can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean the west. They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”
MarketWatch reported the attendees of the intimate Oval Office meeting with Biden and the ever-present Kamala Harris who was seated next to Biden on his right:
Biden was joined in the Oval Office by Sen. Tom Carper, the Delaware Democrat who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, as well as the panel’s top Republican, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.
Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland — who heads the Senate Small Business Committee — and Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, a former chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, also joined, according to the White House.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is quarantining after a member of his security detail tested positive for COVID-19, participated by phone.
Biden met with Xi Jinping in 2011 when both were vice presidents of their respective countries:
10 years ago this summer, @JoeBiden traveled to China for the first serious meetings of any world leader with then-Vice President Xi Jinping. Tonight they spoke for the first time as presidents. pic.twitter.com/hmSghd3mOo
— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) February 11, 2021
