Trump is right about one thing and one thing only. China is kicking our ass. Read this nonsense from 1994 about what was supposed to happen in China and have a good laugh, or a good cry depending on your mood.
Echoing the case made by George Bush when he was president, Clinton said he was convinced the Chinese would take more steps to improve human rights if the issue were separated from the threat of trade sanctions.
“This decision offers us the best opportunity to lay the basis for long-term sustainable progress on human rights and for the advancement of our other interests with China,” he said at a news conference announcing his decision to extend China’s most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status.
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Clinton had been the subject of heavy lobbying by American business interests and his economic advisers to continue China’s trade privileges. With China now the world’s fastest growing economy, the United States exports $8 billion a year there, which sustains up to 150,000 American jobs. Many major American businesses see even greater potential in Chinese markets, expecting China to become a massive purchaser over the next decade of the phones, electronic gadgets and thousands of other products made in America.“I think we have to see our relations with China within a broader context” than simply human rights, Clinton said, adding that the link between rights and trade was no longer tenable. “We have reached the end of the usefulness of that policy,” he said.
…Clinton in his presidential campaign had sharply attacked Bush for extending trade privileges to China in the years following the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, accusing him of “coddling criminals.”
But Clinton said Thursday he has had a change of heart. “Let me ask you the same question I have asked myself,” he said. “Will we do more to advance the cause of human rights if China is isolated.”
Basically the success of China turns all the Chicago school orthodoxy about free trade and globalism in its head. This is some good background on how “free trade” is a joke and when we decided to hand China our lunch.
THE RISE OF CHINA has created a crisis of ideology and policy for the American governing elite. The abject failure of America’s China policy was a blend of ideological blinders and conflicts of interest. Political leaders, seconded by orthodox economists, convinced themselves that by allowing China into the global system via the WTO, they would move China in the direction of liberal free-market democracy. Key people on Wall Street, notably inhabitants of the revolving door such as Robert Rubin, may have had ideological qualms or geopolitical anxieties about the rise of still-communist China. But their firms were making a fortune brokering the deals. In the academy, to be an apologist for Beijing was to get nice lecture fees and generous support for research centers.
The claims of leading figures of that era are embarrassments. George W. Bush could insist: “Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy. … Trade freely with China, and time is on our side.” Tom Friedman flatly predicted, in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree: “China’s going to have a free press. Globalization will drive it.”
None of these worthies seemed to notice that China’s state-led, semi-market economy was practicing something other than free trade. But it was convenient to believe that it was, and that challenges to China’s protection were somehow themselves protectionist.
In the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, flagship of the foreign policy establishment, two notables very belatedly admit that people such as themselves got China totally wrong. Kurt Campbell, former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and Ely Ratner, a senior China expert, both serving under Barack Obama, write:
Diplomatic and commercial engagement have not brought political and economic openness. Neither U.S. military power nor regional balancing has stopped Beijing from seeking to displace core components of the U.S.-led system. And the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected.
