Washington: Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has once again criticised the US trade deficit with China by using the term ‘rape’ to describe it.
At the second rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Trump referred to China's high number of exports relative to the US, saying, “We can't continue to allow China to rape our country, and that's what they're doing.”
Trump has repeatedly accused China of manipulating its currency to make its exports more competitive on the global market and has claimed that China is ‘killing’ the US on trade.
Sunday marks the first time this campaign that Trump has used the term ‘rape’ to refer to what he views as China's dominance in trade with the US.
“We're going to turn it around. And we have the cards, don't forget it. We're like the piggy bank that's being robbed. We have the cards. We have a lot of power with China,” Trump said before referring to China's relationship with the US as rape.
Trump, however, made it clear that that he was not ‘angry at China’, but with US leaders whom he accused of being ‘grossly incompetent’.
Trump previously claimed in 2011 that ‘China was raping this country’ as he toured a defense manufacturer in New Hampshire.
Trump's use of the analogy comes as the business mogul is currently under fire for remarks he made about Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton that critics are calling sexist.
In an interview with the New York Times, the billionaire had said that while it’s easier for the Chinese companies to do business with the US, it is not the same the other way round.
The trade deficit is a measure of the value of goods America exports to China, versus the value of goods coming back the other way. According to the United States Census Bureau, while the US shipped around $9million worth of goods to China per month throughout 2015, China returned an average of $40million worth per month.
Trump is widely expected to win Indiana, a state once led by Ted Cruz, after a poll released on Sunday showed him with a 15-point lead ahead of voting.
With IANS Inputs
