“Deal, real, steal.” Clare Pearson, international development director at DLA Piper, a global law firm, used these three words to define US President Donald Trump on CGTN’s The Point. “Offer the deal, say what you like to get what you need. Real – he needs reality TV. TV is his oxygen. We’ve got to think about where he is in the election cycle. He just wants a headline. Trade war is a great headline. And steal – he just steals the limelight. Whether he is offending Merkel or backstabbing May, he just wants a headline. He is all about reality TV. He is not about economic reality,” she explained. 

When asked why there is a dramatic disconnect between the US’ accusations of China’s “unfair trade practices” and China’s defense of having kept its free trade commitments, Pearson dismissed Trump as “way off the mark.”

“We've got two different stories from two different groups of people. We've got Peter Navarro. He is feeding Trump a story about 'Death by China,' not a level playing field, China is cheating, intellectual property war. Then you've got the people who actually work in China. Nobody is making US companies come to China. They are choosing to invest in China because of the opportunities and free trade, because of the opportunities to access the world’s largest consumer market,” added Pearson.

 According to Wang Shouwen, China's vice minister of commerce and deputy China international trade representative, from 2001 to 2017, China's imports of goods increased at an annual average growth rate of 13.5 percent, twice as high as the world average. 

“I work in a law firm. Our clients are not complaining,” Pearson further explained. “When I started in the law firm in Beijing 12 years ago, people would always say, ‘why China?' They don’t say that today. Forty percent of our partners are Americans. They choose to work here. The opportunities are here. It's a level playing field. There is free trade.”

Pearson said it feels out of date when we see Trump pulling back from the multilateral world order. “It's no longer good enough to be a winner in the white man's world. Trump is playing an anachronistic game… the US used to be the country that cultivated soft power so ably. But increasingly, the advocates for internationalization are coming out of China,” she said. 

The Point with Liu Xin is a 30-minute current affairs program on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 9:30 p.m. BJT (1330GMT), with rebroadcasts at 5:30 a.m. (2130GMT) and 10:30 a.m. (0230GMT).