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Former CIA boss warns that a Trump-style trade policy is the road to 'Weimar America'

Yahoo Finance sat down with former-NSA and CIA head General Michael Hayden to discuss terrorism threats and the stand-off between the FBI and Apple  (AAPL) in the San Bernadino iPhone standoff.
But Hayden said that while a lot of our energy has been focused on immediate threats, we have lost sight of key long-term issues, notably China.

“The managing of the emergence of a new global power is the most serious challenge for American diplomacy and statecraft that we face,” he said.

As presidential candidate Donald Trump has riled up voters in calling out free trade deals with China and Mexico, Hayden said this rhetoric and discussion are worrisome.

“It’s a tremendous danger. We are a very competitive society. Look at our numbers globally in terms of what our economy is doing. We are actually pretty healthy. This is not Weimar America. We’re actually being fairly successful… because we are open to global trade. I know it raises all sorts of issues in fairness and we ought to do a better job at accommodating some of the ill effects of global trade."

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He emphasized that global trade benefits the U.S. and tariff proposals would be detrimental to our economy.

“So when you talk about slopping on tarriffs that look a bit like Smoot Hawley back in the '20s that everyone agrees deepened the Great Depression, it’s really scary stuff.”

The United States and China, the world’s second-largest economy, are more co-dependent than ever before in history.

“I don’t know of another example in history when the economies of the emerging and status quo power have been so deeply intertwined as the American and the Chinese economies.”