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On Wednesday, an investigation from the New York Times revealed that Donald Trump, as an extension of his hotel business, owned a bank account in China. Whilst this is hardly controversial in and of itself, the paper revealed that Trump had paid the Chinese government 188,561 U.S. dollars in taxes, which contrasted sharply to a previous revelation that the President had paid his own country just 750 dollars in recent years. The revelations come despite Trump's longstanding rhetoric that China is "ripping off billions of dollars from the United States" which he has used to brandish Sinophobic populism against China and make a pitch for "America first."

But these developments might lead us to question, who is ripping off whom? And are Trump's pitches to the American public on China truly sincere? And will they bring the results American voters hoped for? The answer is, such news shows just how insincere and misleading the President's rhetoric really is. Whilst blaming all of China for America's woes, Trump himself is arguably part of them as a billionaire who avoids paying his taxes where possible, deflecting the equality and unjust nature of U.S. society onto a foreign adversary, all whilst ironically, having profited from that foreign adversary himself. Whilst he is entitled to have his business interests, the contrast shows the President doesn't stand with the ordinary American.

As the election campaign heats up, Trump has weaponized COVID-19 to generate an anti-China backlash, which he promises will be a land of milk and voters for American voters. He says he will punish China for the virus by placing even more tariffs on their exports to the United States, despite a trade deal signed at the beginning of this year, he pledges to create 10 million jobs by repatriating industry to the United States. With the U.S. suffering from high levels of unemployment because of the virus, it seems like a perfect venting point. Yet, after more than two years of trade wars and tariffs, can Trump actually claim any results? Have American lives improved?

The answer is no. Although the President now uses the virus and China as a convenient scapegoat as to why he didn't achieve his promises in the first term, the truth is, he never done so anyway and was not close to, either. Trump's tariffs have, in fact, hurt supply chains and pushed U.S. manufacturing into contraction, because the truth is, Sinophobia is not the answer to all of America's woes, it is "snake oil" (a substance with no real medicinal value sold as a remedy for all diseases), something poisonous and disingenuous. In reality, the real problem plaguing America's working classes and blue-collar voters is the likes of Trump himself.

Whilst blaming China, the President uses every means available to avoid paying his taxes and thus his own commitment to American society, and simultaneously, pays more to China itself whilst parading it as the enemy of the common man. Although one can discuss how this shows Trump is being individually disingenuous and uses this "America First" rhetoric for his own personal benefit than a serious commitment to his country, it also exposes how the President is a symbol of rampant inequality in the United States and how ultimately, the elite of the country utilize the discourse of "foreign threats" to deflect, mask, and scapegoat the country's problems on others. More often than not, the U.S. public buy into this rhetoric, and thus, nothing changes.

But if anything, this revelation should come with a warning. The tax fiasco illustrates firmly that Trump's pleas for "America First" are disingenuous and are not based on solidarity with ordinary, left behind Americans, but opportunism. Anti-China policies are not going to bring jobs back to America, and nor are they going to make people's lives better. Trump is and has always distracted attention from where the real problems are. China has not ripped off the American public, but he has done so and as a huge ironic twist, China has made more money from Trump individually than the average American ever will. This is not so much a twist about a single bank account, which standalone may be uncontroversial, but a bigger and more telling story about just who Trump really is and the disingenuous nature of what he actually stands for.

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