CNBC’s Jim Cramer Pleads With Trump to Be ‘Good Cop’ on China: ‘Not the Time’ for a Trade War, ‘What Are We Crazy!?’

By his own admission, CNBC’s Jim Cramer is a longtime hawk on U.S. economic relations with China. (“I still say ‘the Wuhan virus,'” Cramer notes.) But despite his entrenched position, the financial commentator is pleading with President Donald Trump to take less of a hard line on China, for the time being.

In a passionate commentary on Squawk on the Street Friday morning, Cramer lamented the current state of affairs between the U.S. and China.

“This is terrible,” Cramer said. “The China haters and China lovers should look at our retail sales this morning and say, ‘you know what? Maybe we’ve got to shut up a little bit here. Maybe we’re not as strong as we’d like and we should hold out until we’re stronger.'”

Cramer warned that the timing is poor for a trade beef with China.

“This is not the time to cause some sort of trade war that escalates to the point where we have tariffs like 1930,” he said. “What are we crazy?!”

The CNBC commentator called on the president to play peacemaker of sorts, given the presence of China hawks like Peter Navarro in his administration.

“[Trump] already has some bad cops out there,” Cramer said. “He needs to be more good cop — even if for a second it makes us look like we’re nice to the Chinese.”

Watch above, via CNBC.