Former Vice President Joe Biden’s pick to be Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, previously said it is a “mistake” for the United States to “fully decouple” from China.

On Monday, Biden confirmed that he plans to nominate Blinken to become his Secretary of State. Blinken, in September, shared his view that the U.S. would be making a mistake if it decoupled from China, the same position held by the Chinese communist government.

“Trying to fully decouple, as some have suggested, from China … is unrealistic and ultimately counter-productive. It would be a mistake,” Blinken told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during an online event.

Months prior, China’s state-run media called a U.S. decoupling from China “delusional” and claimed such a move would “cost lives” amid the Chinese coronavirus crisis.

Likewise, in July, Blinken suggested that a Biden administration would “work with China” on common global goals such as climate change initiatives:

Finally, I think you’d see a Biden demonstration having reestablished a relative strength in the relationship, then be able to engage China and work with China, in areas where our interests clearly overlap, whether it is again, contending with climate change, dealing with global health and pandemics, dealing with the spread of dangerous weapons. We’re much better off though, finding ways to cooperate when we’re acting from a position of strength than from a position of weakness.

While Biden’s pick to lead the State Department has already shut down decoupling from China, President Donald Trump always left total decoupling on the table while trying to separate the U.S. from China with tariffs on foreign imports to help reduce the nation’s trade deficit.

Economist Alan Tonelson, who writes the RealityChek blog, told Breitbart News that “any U.S. leader failing to understand this economic and national security imperative” of unmeshing the American economy with China’s “isn’t qualified to hold office.”

“Undoing the damage and averting the dangers of the epic blunder of integrating the U.S. economy with that of a predatory totalitarian system will inevitably involve greatly reducing levels of U.S. trade and investment with China,” Tonelson said.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.