Treasury Man Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are going to Switzerland to meet with Communist Chinese officials, and I am sure it’s a good idea.

They’re apparently going to de-escalate — or perhaps even negotiate an end to the United States-China trade war.

Yet I’m also pleased that President Trump is keeping a hard line by ruling out today lowering his tariffs on China at the present time.

I do, however, kind of wish Peter Navarro were going on this trip. 

Why?

Well, Mr. Navarro is very much a hard-liner on China.

And you know what? So am I.

Perhaps Mr. Navarro and I don’t always agree, but I think that when it comes to taking an ultra-tough line on China, we do agree.

As I’ve said many times, China cannot be trusted. They are our foremost enemy in the world.

After two and a half years of negotiating the so-called Phase One China Trade Deal, the Chinese never adhered to the deal.

And they double-crossed Mr. Trump on fentanyl, abandoning President Xi’s promise that they will crack down on it.

Most importantly, Mr. Trump has now basically turned China’s water off when it comes to their economy.

We’re their best customer, but with a 145 percent tariff, they can’t sell us very much.

And, of course, one of the major problems with the roughly trillion-dollar trade deficit we have with China is that they are experts when it comes to denying market access to our companies who wish to export over there.

Plus, we’ve never solved the intellectual property theft problem, or the forced technology transfer problem.

Plus, they reneged on the commodity purchase deals for farming and manufacturing.

So, who could ever trust them?

And, then, there is this great Wall Street Journal story today: “How Bad Is China’s Economy? The Data Needed to Answer Is Vanishing.”

Beijing has stopped publishing hundreds of statistics — including on unemployment, land sales, investor flight, even on cremated bodies.

Heck, they won’t even tell the truth about soy sauce production.

Why? The answer is — their economy is collapsing. And Mr. Trump’s tariffs are making it worse.

Factory workers are protesting throughout China. The unrest has workers taking to the streets over unpaid wages and, of course, factory shutterings.

Some 16 million jobs could be lost, according to Wall Street estimates.

They need us a lot more than we ever needed them. Or, perhaps, they should’ve just adhered to the original trade deal five years ago and things wouldn’t have come to this impasse.

China is a brutal dictatorship, run by an imperial president who is desperately trying to hide the failure and ruin he has inflicted on his people.

The American trade war with China is not a war against the Chinese people. It’s a war against their government.

And that government that can never be believed, nor trusted.

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.