Mike Pence: We’ll continue to hold China accountable

US Vice President Mike Pence has said that the United States is going to continue to hold China accountable for allowing people to continue to leave the Wuhan area in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic to travel to the US and around the world and for keeping the information that the US and the world required and deserved to deal with the pandemic.

VP Pence was speaking exclusively with CNBC‘s “Squawk on the Street” late last week.

Answering a question by show host Jim Kramer, the vice president said, “No president in my lifetime has done more to rebalance our trading relationship and to stand up to China’s abuses than President Donald Trump,” according to the interview’s unofficial transcript US and Global News received from NBCUniversal, the owner of CNBC.

Mike Pence added that “you have seen that” in action recently.

“And when you look at China’s conduct in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it just — it reaffirms the strong stand that President Trump took from very early on in his administration, relative to China,” said Pence.

Saying that China is again violating its international agreement concerning Hong Kong, Vice President Pence said that it just affirms that.

Coming back to “China’s conduct in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic,” the VP said, “What China did in, in, in keeping from the world. The information that America, and every nation on Earth needed to deal with the coronavirus pandemic was, it was a travesty.”

According to the unofficial transcript we received, he added, “That the fact that China’s suspended traveled within China but allowed people to continue to leave the Wuhan area to travel to the United States and around the world.”

Pence further said that President Trump had suspended all travel from China to US before there was a single domestic case of community COVID-19 transmission in the US and that allowed the US to slow the spread.

“But again, I just have to tell you that, you know, before there was a single domestic case of community transmission in the United States, the American people can take great comfort in the fact that in late-January President Trump suspended all travel from China,” added Pence. “And I can tell you, having been leading the Coronavirus Task Force now over the last three months, that act alone bought us an invaluable amount of time to stand up — on hold of — America’s response that unquestionably, because of the cooperation the American people, because of the leadership in state and local leaders and incredible health care workers, and the leadership of President Trump, we slowed the spread, we flatten the curve, and we saved lives.”

He then said, “But now going forward we’re going to continue to hold China accountable for what they did and what they failed to do, to give the world, the information that we all needed and deserved.”

Watch the above reported part of the US vice president’s interview on CNBC’s website, here.