President Trump framed Thursday’s actions as a response to blatantly unfair and improper Chinese rules that force U.S. firms seeking to access the Chinese market to form joint ventures with Chinese companies.

The rules enable the Chinese firms to routinely steal the intellectual property of the U.S. companies. This gives the Chinese the ability to use American-developed advanced technology to strengthen their own industries to better compete with American firms in China and around the world.

President Trump is saying, in effect, that he will not allow China to steal our trade secrets and then use those secrets to compete against us. He is pushing back against a Chinese government that is slowly but surely leveraging its newfound economic muscle – an economy worth over $11 trillion that is now the second biggest on the planet – to gain economic, political and military power throughout Asia and across the globe.