\n<\/p>\n
A top donor to Donald Trump and other Maga Republicans has privately mocked the US president\u2019s longtime position that he has an upper hand in trade negotiations with China, in a sign that even some loyal supporters have been uneasy with the White House strategy.<\/p>\n
Liz Uihlein, the billionaire businesswoman who co-founded the office supply company Uline with her husband, Richard, sent an email to her staff earlier this year that contained a cartoon in which Trump can be seen playing cards with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. In the cartoon, Trump claims: \u201cI hold the cards\u201d, to which Xi responds: \u201cThe cards are made in China.\u201d<\/p>\n
The email, seen by the Guardian, appears to have been sent in April by an administrative assistant on Liz Uihlein\u2019s behalf. Uihlein prefaced the cartoon with a short remark: \u201cAll \u2013 The usual. Liz\u201d.<\/p>\n
The barb is significant because it was sent by an important political ally to Trump and his movement. Liz and Richard Uihlein were the fourth largest political donors in the presidential election cycle, having given $143m to Republicans, according to Opensecrets, which tracks political giving.<\/p>\n
A Uline spokesperson said Liz Uihlein had no comment. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Uline is a privately held company, and it is difficult to gauge the exact impact Trump\u2019s tariff and other trade policies have on the office supply company. But people who spoke to the Guardian say Uline imports a significant amount of its merchandise from China and other parts of the world. It is not the first time Uihlein has weighed in on trade policy. Lamenting how the Covid-19 pandemic had hit the global supply chain, Uihlein wrote in a letter published in the Uline catalog after the 2020 election that \u201cAmerica sorely needs a coherent, largely united trade policy, if we don\u2019t get it done, this century belongs to the Chinese.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is not the only mega-donor to have previously been critical of the president. Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot and a longtime Republican donor, said in an interview with the Financial Times in April that the tariffs the White House had announced at the time \u2013 which have since been rolled back \u2013 were too high and implemented too quickly, adding that the president had been \u201cpoorly advised\u201d.<\/p>\n
Langone reversed himself a few months later, in July, when he told CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box that he was not longer concerned that Trump could use his position in the Oval Office to engage in retribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy to say that I\u2019m comfortable he\u2019s not doing that. He\u2019s acting presidential. I\u2019m impressed with the people he\u2019s got around him,\u201d Langone said.<\/p>\n
Trump has touted the US as having an edge in negotiations with China as recently as last month. In comments in the Oval Office he said the US and China would have a \u201cgreat relationship\u201d, but also noted that he could \u201cdestroy China\u201d by playing \u201cincredible cards\u201d if he wanted to.<\/p>\n
Trump is due to speak to Xi on Friday in the wake of a deal agreed by both countries that would keep the TikTok app running in the US.<\/p>\n
Both sides have for now suspended the toughest tit-for-tat economic measures lobbed against each other since Trump\u2019s second term began, when the US threatened tariffs as high as 145% against China. The US and China reached a pact to decrease the tariffs in May and renewed the lower rate in August in the wake of a new round of negotiations. That extension will expire in mid-November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A top donor to Donald Trump and other Maga Republicans has privately mocked the US president\u2019s longtime position that he has an upper hand in trade negotiations with China, in a sign that even some loyal supporters have been uneasy with the White House strategy. Liz Uihlein, the billionaire businesswoman who co-founded the office supply<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2153,3287,964,2056,13809,12975,4436,81,13810],"class_list":{"0":"post-22530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-claim","10":"tag-donald","11":"tag-hand","12":"tag-megadonor","13":"tag-mocked","14":"tag-privately","15":"tag-trump","16":"tag-upper"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}