LARRY KUDLOW: Biden foreign policy is built on an architecture of appeasing our adversaries and our enemies

President Joe Biden sat down with Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference and talked about plain vanilla things like "managing" friendly economic competition, climate change, better military communications and AI (artificial intelligence).  

Just a friendly sit-down with a couple of old-timers. Honestly, those were some of the key topics.  So, me, I could scream. In fact, I am screaming.  Who is Joe Biden kidding? Climate change? Really?   

Here's what I'd like to talk about climate change: China is financing two wars against the United States by buying Russian and Iranian oil. Now that's a climate change issue.  It's also an issue that is damaging American security. It's also an issue that clearly reveals Xi Jinping's desire to replace the United States as the dominant power in the world.   

Of course, Xi's oil purchases are violating the American sanctions theoretically backed by the Biden administration, but in fact not enforced.  Remember Ukraine? Neither the U.S., nor third-party countries, nor private businesses, were supposed to purchase or insure Russian oil. What happened to that?  Of course, the Trump Iran sanctions, which by congressional mandate are still theoretically in place and Joe Biden is theoretically enforcing them, have been completely abandoned.  

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Now, that's an international, political climate changer. As in, Xi wants to displace America.  As far as all the Green New Deal climate bunnies inhabiting the Biden administration, I seriously doubt any of them advised President Biden to ask Xi why he's building 250 coal plants every year.   

Somebody should ask Xi – in this Bidenesque world of emergency climate threats that really don't exist – why he is using all those dreaded fossil fuel purchases to wreak havoc on the world. Just ask him in public with numbers.   

China is purchasing 1.45 million barrels per day at roughly $70 a barrel, which comes to $37 billion for the Iranian mullahs so they can destroy Israel and the U.S.. China is buying 2.6 million barrels per day from Russia at around the same $70 a barrel, coming to roughly $65 billion in fresh cash for Russia so they can slaughter Ukrainians.    

Those are facts, but Biden won't ask about them because he lacks the moral clarity and the personal conviction to ask. Do you think President Biden will ask Xi why the United States is still running a roughly $350 billion trade deficit with China because of unfair trading practices?   

Or, has anybody told Joe Biden that the trade gap with China is going to get worse? Because all the greenie EV batteries, solar panels and rare earth minerals for Biden's Green New Deal army will be made in China? Former Trump trade adviser Robert Lighthizer notes that all that U.S. cash exchanged for those huge trade deficits has been used by China to help finance terrorism and mayhem around the world, to build up their military.   

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Including all the Chinese fighter jets buzzing Taiwan that came to a record 1,700 times last year.  Or the cash used to subjugate Hong Kong's democracy. Or the genocide against the Uyghurs.  Or the technology that went into those fancy Chinese spy balloons hovering over the United States.  Or all the money they're spending in our own backyard in Cuba, Central and South America and for that matter all the Belt & Road infrastructure they're trying to build in Africa and elsewhere to spread their brand of Chinese communism and upend American influence in every corner of the globe.   

Why doesn't Biden ask Mr. Xi about those issues? Why not?  Because Biden foreign policy from top to bottom is built on an architecture of appeasing our adversaries and our enemies. No deterrence. No strong actions to enforce a diplomacy of America First. No toughness. Never peace through strength and this foreign policy, which has stretched from Afghanistan to Ukraine and now to Iran, desperately ignores the massive Chinese threat that has made the world a vastly more dangerous place.   

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the November 15, 2023, edition of "Kudlow."