First Nixon, then all the West opened China to modernity. Their naive notion was that, if China embraced capitalism, it would create a wealthy middle class of hundreds of millions ... which would provide an enormously juicy market for our products and service. This was all under the rubric of "free trade."
Didn't happen. Instead, the U.S. and the rest of the world became customers for Chinese products while being shutout, with tariffs and autocratic restrictions, from freely entering Chinese markets ... or, even worse, being forced to cede trade secrets and technologies to their Chinese "partners."
It was not like this mercantilism was a secret. Ever since Bill Clinton opened the door to the World Trade Organization to China, American presidents and candidates have averted their eyes from this potentially fatal flaw in world trade ... except for Donald Trump ... who is willing to try to fix things while they still might be fixable.
A simple conclusion: capitalism under a democratic government is powerful ... but is quite dangerous when tightly managed by a totalitarian regime.
If Ptesident Trump will succeed in his trade war is any one's guess. But, for me, I give him great credit for trying. And, if he does win, somehow I doubt if China's Xi is going to embark on an apology tour ...
You can't "fix" things with a sledgehammer. Ask the cranberry growers and soybean farmers who they will be supporting in future elections. And the millions that have been disrupted by the McConnell/Trump shutdown. Trump is a bull in a china shop - this time he will pay for the breakage.
ReplyDeleteYou also can't fix things by ignoring them. No guarantee that Trump will remedy trade and immigration ... but at least he has focused on these (and other) problems and is working to fix them.
DeleteAnd so much of the country is actively working against solving these problems ... so sad.
ReplyDeleteIf the majority is working against Trump's solutions, maybe the problems are fake?
ReplyDeleteJust heard his latest publicity stunt hurt the economy to the tune of 11 Billion. If that's fixing things...please stop.
Picking through the pepper for fly poop ... (I read the CBO said $3 billion ... could have helped build the wall.)
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