Republican nominee Donald Trump has blamed US President Joe Biden for the deepening of Russia-China ties, and promised to drive a wedge between the two nuclear powers.
In an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson in front of a large crowd of supporters in Glendale, Arizona, Trump accused Biden of damaging America’s standing in the world.
“We’re a failing nation,” he said. “We are a nation in very serious decline.”
The former president went on to blame Biden for incentivizing closer cooperation between Moscow and Beijing.
“Look at what these stupid people have done. They’ve allowed Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and others to get together in a group,” Trump said. He added that one of his professors at the Wharton School of Finance told him that “the one thing you never want to happen is Russia and China uniting.”
“We united them because of the oil. Biden united them. It’s a shame,” he added, without elaborating. ”I'm going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that too.”
Trump expressed fears about the future of the US dollar in international trade. “We’re losing the dollar as the standard because of these people... if we lose the dollar as the standard, that’s like losing a war,” he said.
Russia and China are members of several regional groups, including BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Both countries described their relations as a strategic partnership and have rallied against American “unilateralism” on the world stage. Beijing has refused to join Western economic sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict.
The US has disconnected Russia’s central bank from dollar transactions as part of its its massive sanctions campaign against Moscow.
Russia and other BRICS members have moved to using their own national currencies in 65% of their trade with each other, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month. Some 90% of Russia’s transactions with its largest trade partner, China, are being conducted in their national currencies, Putin said earlier this year.
At the BRICS summit in Russia’s Kazan last month, member states condemned “illegal” Western sanctions, stating that the restrictions undermine the global economy.