Steve Wynn, chairman of Wynn Resorts, downplayed concerns over “sabre-rattling” between the United States and China under the new Donald Trump presidential administration and was optimistic that leaders of both countries see one another as long-term partners.
“There isn’t a leader in America or a leader in China that doesn’t understand that when the United States and the People’s Republic of China come together on an intelligent basis, the world is a better place,” Wynn said during his company’s fourth quarter 2016 earnings call.
“I am in a position to know that that opinion is held in Washington and Beijing, and it gives me long-term confidence in spite of what happened short-term verbally. We must not confuse long-term United States policy with the short-term conversations that lead to its development.”
Wynn’s comments came in response to an analyst’s question about potential risk to his Macau properties in light of an ongoing spat between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jingping. China-bashing was a common theme during Trump’s campaign, as he frequently accused the East-Asian giant of unfair trade practices such as keeping its currency artificially low to make its exports more competitive globally.
Wynn labeled the recent tense rhetoric between the world’s two largest economies as a byproduct of two governments that are aggressively looking out for the best interests of their people.
“They do the best they can in China to create jobs and take people out of poverty, and that makes it very dynamic in [managing] their economy with that single goal in mind,” he said. “It affects everything – from the way they treat energy, to the way they create plants and factories, to how they manage their currency, the movement of their currency and their trade policy.”
“The United States has its own point of view on that subject, and the president has been really clear during the campaign that he wants to protect American jobs. Well, that’s what they want to do in China as well,” Wynn continued. “So there’s going to have to be a rapprochement. There’s going to have to be an adjustment. We basically do have intelligent people on both sides dealing with this. My own feeling is that it will resolve itself intelligently.”
Wynn emphasized that many of the accusations being hurled are equally prevalent on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. For example, while Trump has vowed to label a currency manipulator, he said that the U.S. has effectively been engaging in the same policy the past eight years.
“China controls its currency, but during [quantitative easing] one, two and three we devalued the U.S. dollar by close to 20 percent,” he said. “So when the [Federal Reserve], in financing a deficit close to $2 billion a day, increases the money supply, well that’s the same sort of thing – we just do it differently than in a centrally controlled government in Beijing.”
While acknowledging that major differences and issues need to be ironed out, he assured that cooler heads will ultimately prevail on both sides.
Noting that he and several other casino executives were present at Trump’s swearing-in ceremony last Friday, Wynn emphasized that “we all believed, and I mean all of us, that the most overwhelmingly important event geopolitically for the last 50 years is a liaison – a constructive liaison – between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America. That truth is undeniable, that dynamic is unquestioned.”
Wynn also took the occasion to express his enthusiasm for Trump – his former archrival in the Atlantic City gambling business – and his presidential administration.
“The fact that America is going through a change is probably the greatest thing that’s happened in my lifetime, because we were so on the wrong track for the past 8 years – and I’ve made no secret about that,” he said. “I think we’re in for better times, for sure.”
