Billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio issued a bold warning Tuesday, urging that the U.S.'s relationship with China is "on the brink of red lines."
The "breaking point," as noted by Dalio during his speech at the Greenwich Economic Forum, would be if the United States were to support Taiwan's independence, which would be the equivalent of a "declaration of war."
During an appearance on "Mornings with Maria," Atlas Organization founder Jonathan D.T. Ward bolstered Dalio's warning, while also noting that he is a well-known "apologist" for China's human rights "atrocities."
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"Dalio is well-known as sort of, an apologist for the Communist Party of China. He's got a pretty deep well of writing and speaking on that. I mean the kinds of things he's said in support of their human rights atrocities and that sort of thing is, I think, [have] been astonishing to many people," Ward said Thursday.
"Expressing a level of risk here that may be beneficial in the finance community in the sense that if people are listening to him and starting to hear that China's a riskier destination, I think that's very important," he continued. "People do listen to Dalio. I think they've listened to him for the wrong reasons for a lot of the time, but now at this point, I think he's just saying: look, this is all getting very risky."
Key members from the Biden administration have also started to reverse course on its energy policy, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has said that the U.S. has become overly dependent on China.
"I think Yellen is someone who seems to be going up the learning curve here a bit. But in the same speech, it was at the Fortune CEO summit, she said we don't want decoupling with China. So, I think there's just a lack of clarity in her understanding of the China situation," Ward continued.
"She's not sending clear signals to the business community, which you would need to do as the treasury secretary. And this is one of the most important strategic departments in an economic context. It's vital to national security, really. And to see her sort of going back and forth in terms of what she understands, I think is concerning. But at least it's showing some of the risks to the business community, if not clear direction."
FOX Business host Maria Bartiromo raised an additional point of concern stemming from China's growing aggression: drug smuggling.
As noted by Bartiromo, the Department of Justice has announced indictments and sanctions against eight China-based companies and 12 Chinese nationals for their role in the alleged trafficking of precursors used to make fentanyl. The Treasury Department also sanctioned 28 people and entities that were allegedly part of a drug trafficking network.
"Apparently this is part of what's now called a whole-of-government approach to the fentanyl crisis. So that's incredibly important," Ward began.
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"The Center for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this year, that 77,000 overdose deaths between May of 2022 and April of 2023 have come from primarily U.S. fentanyl-related substances. And the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency has told us that nearly all the precursors come from China," the Atlas Organization founder continued.
"Now we're getting into a situation where the fentanyl deaths in just one year are double the deaths of U.S. servicemen in the Korean War. They exceed the deaths of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam," he added. "And they're actually more than the combined killed-in-action deaths of both Korea and Vietnam. So this is just insane."
