Jimmy Carter: Trump Called Me, He’s Bothered That “China Is Getting Ahead of US”

Carter confirms Trump's problem aren't trade imbalances as such but that China is set to eclipse the US

Carter advised Trump that “China has not wasted a single penny on war”

Former President Jimmy Carter told a church congregation this weekend that he had spoken with President Donald Trump about China on Saturday, and said the commander in chief was worried that Beijing had outpaced its global rivals.

According to Emma Hurt, a reporter for NPR affiliate WABE, Carter spoke of the call during his regular Sunday School lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.

Carter, 94, said Trump was worried that “China is getting ahead of us,” and suggested the president was right to be concerned.

He told the congregation that Trump feared China’s growing economic strength. Economic modeling indicated that China would overtake the U.S. as the world’s strongest economy by  2030, and many experts have said that we were already living in what has been dubbed the “Chinese Century.”

Carter said he did not “really fear that time, but it bothers President Trump and I don’t know why. I’m not criticizing him this morning,” he added, to laughs from fellow churchgoers.

Carter—who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979—suggested that China’s breakneck growth had been facilitated by sensible investment and buoyed by peace.

“Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?” Carter asked. “None. And we have stayed at war.” The U.S., he noted, has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” Carter said. This is, he said, because of America’s tendency to force other nations to “adopt our American principles.”

In China, meanwhile, the economic benefits of peace were clear to the eye. “How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?” he asked. While China has some 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, the U.S. has “wasted, I think, $3 trillion” on military spending. “It’s more than you can imagine. China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.”

“And I think the difference is if you take $3 trillion and put it in American infrastructure you’d probably have $2 trillion leftover. We’d have high-speed railroad. We’d have bridges that aren’t collapsing, we’d have roads that are maintained properly. Our education system would be as good as that of say South Korea or Hong Kong,” Carter told the congregation.

Before he left the pulpit, Carter noted, “I wasn’t comparing my country adversely to China. I was just pointing that out because I happened to get a phone call last night.”

Source: Newsweek

9 Comments
  1. […] Carter confirms Trump’s problem aren’t trade imbalances as such but that China is set to… […]

  2. JustPassingThrough says

    There was a very important conference held in Bejing in middle May of 2019.
    It was titled “Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations.”

    “Chinese President Xi Jinping said that no civilization is superior to another and willfully reshaping or replacing a civilization would be disastrous, during a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations in Beijing on Wednesday.” –CGTN

    Here is a link to the opening words of POCN to the assembled audience:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSBJiwa_V8Y

    25 minutes of worthwhile watching.
    I hope Jimmy Carter sent the POTUS the link.

  3. CHUCKMAN says

    I love Jimmy Carter, so underappreciated in the US.

    A very bright and ethical man who tells us more truths than any other American political figure of recent times.

    Of course, the powers that be in America want anything but truth.

    Just look at what they’re doing with Julian Assange.

    It’s interesting, though, that even a blowhard like Trump knows Carter is a man worth talking to.

    1. JHK says

      carter infiltraited, took over, and removed the Founder of Habitat for Humanity, making it into one of the most useless organizations in history.

      Why, because carter is a snake, who says truthful words, but start treaty oil embargo, carter is the crux of nato against Iran Russia and China.

      And the proof is that carter lives off of the zionist empire like a senator palpatine sith lord.

  4. JHK says

    carters the one who started the war on the Middle East. So trump is also correct, all the ded prezidents are responsible, and will pay.

  5. John C Carleton says

    When i was in high school, and the peanut farmer from Georgia was in the big Cat House, on the rear bumper of my car i had a bumper sticker.
    “BOZO FOR PRESIDENT!
    WHATS ONE MORE CLOWN IN THE WHITE HOUSE?”

    Lord-lord!
    If i had only known how much worse it could get.

  6. BillA says

    don’t much like Carter, but he is quite correct; and the US has blown their opportunity

  7. storbjorn1 says

    Very well said…

  8. TB Wong says

    Carter was one of the decent President that the US has not had for a long long time.

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