Waltz as US national security adviser would fit Trump’s tough line on China: analysts

Name: Global reaction to Trump's win in the US presidential election
Uploaded: 2024-11-12T08:20:21.000Z
Duration: 3 min 19 s
Description: Global reaction to Trump's win in the US presidential election

Hardline congressman Mike Waltz has called China an ‘existential threat’ to US interests and called for a boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Florida Republican Congressman Mike Waltz is viewed as among the most hawkish members of Congress and is a member of the House Republicans’ China Task Force. Photo: Getty Images

Dewey Sim

Published: 4:20pm, 12 Nov 2024Updated: 10:25pm, 12 Nov 2024

US president-elect Donald Trump’s reported choice of a China hawk as his new national security adviser hints at a tougher China policy in the Republican’s new administration, observers say.

According to multiple reports on Tuesday, Trump has asked Mike Waltz, a Florida congressman and retired Army Special Forces officer, to fill the key position as he considers who to put on his team for his second presidency.

Waltz has been an ardent supporter of Trump and a vocal critic of President Joe Biden and is known for being sceptical of US aid for Ukraine.

On China, he is viewed as among the most hawkish members of Congress. He is a member of the House Republicans’ China Task Force which looks at how Washington should compete with Beijing.

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Global reaction to Trump's win in the US presidential election

In 2021, he called for the US to boycott the Winter Olympics hosted by Beijing, introducing the resolution by saying that China’s Communist Party had “carried out a number of heinous acts in the last year alone that should disqualify them from hosting” the event.