The Donald Trump trade doctrine is this. America will trade with any country, so long as that deal meets these three criterion: You increase the GDP growth rate, you decrease the trade deficit, and you strengthen the manufacturing base.

China are running trade deficits with the rest of the world. If you look at the U.S. trade deficit, it's close to $800 billion trade in goods. Half of that is with China, so it's a big part of the problem. And the problem with China, as opposed to, say, Canada, is that China cheats.

No one should be surprised just because somebody isn't successful 100 percent of the time.

Donald Trump is not a protectionist. If he imposes tariffs on China or any other country that cheats, all he wants to do is defend America against unfair trade practices.

The defining moment in American economic history is when Bill Clinton lobbied to get China into the World Trade Organization. It was the worst political and economic mistake in American history in the last 100 years.

Donald Trump understands China influence. He's been talking about it since 1980. He understands it. The people that are on the other side of this, including his opponent, Hillary Clinton, have been part of every bad trade negotiation we've had since 1993.

The policy goal is to persuade China to stop cheating. But here's what's interesting - Donald Trump intuitively understands what things should be. I did a study in 2008 where I estimated the impact of China's unfair trade practices on their competitive advantage - the so-called China Price. You know what it came out to be? Forty-three percent. Forty-three percent - very close to what his intuition said we needed in order to equalize things.