I thought the China visits by Nixon, Reagan and GB were what opened up China and improved our relations.
I don’t think you could point to any single item and say that it opened up China. It’s a process that’s been going on for some time.
After the fall of the Soviet Union there was a move to place China in the role of “evil empire”, and to try and to strive for a “victory” over China, marked by a formal fall for the Communist Party. There was a good deal of hysteria over it: remember NewsMax and the great nonexistent “Chinese naval base” in the Bahamas?
At the same time, others were pointing out that China was moving away from Communism at the fastest rate it could manage, that economic liberalization would ultimately be the key to spurring political liberalization, and that a confrontational approach aimed at radical change would not be beneficial to China or the US.
The Clinton administration adopted the latter philosophy, and while the merits or demerits of any given action can be infinitely debated, it’s pretty clear in retrospect that it was the right thing to do. If they had followed the opposite approach, things could be a good deal harder for us now.
I spent a good deal of time in the late ‘90s pointing out that while Clinton might be a jackass, a confrontational China policy would not be a terribly productive thing for anyone. That debate, and its eventual descent into pettiness, sank the Asia Forum thread, once among the best on SI.
As I’ve pointed out before, a lot of Republicans were so busy pointing at China as the Next Great Enemy that they completely missed the chance to point at the real Next Great Enemy.
I am for the principles of free trade that NAFTA proposes.
You could have fooled me. You sound positively left wing on the issue… or you sure you aren’t a closet union activist, humming “we shall overcome” while nobody on SI is listening?
Ok, let me take the conservative role for a change…
Ross Perot's prediction that, with NAFTA, the giant sucking sound you will hear will be the export of American jobs has certainly materialized.
What is an “American job”? Is it carved in stone somewhere that once a job has been done by an American, it is henceforth and forever an “American job”, and can only be done by Americans? Why shouldn’t Toyota assemble cars in Mexico and sell them in the US? Why shouldn’t GM do the same thing? Why should Americans be forced to pay higher prices for manufactured goods to subsidize an overpaid and uncompetitive labor force?
Don’t give me this Gephardt bullshit about “American jobs” being taken by starving sweatshop workers that sleep on cardboard boxes, either. There are people sleeping on boxes in these countries, yes, but they aren’t the ones working for multinational corporations. They’re the ones without jobs, and there will be a whole lot more of them if American corporations are not allowed to invest in other countries. In every case I’ve seen – and I’ve seen plenty – American and multinational companies pay at or above local scale, and generally provide a relatively enlightened management culture. The wages they pay are spent locally, and really do trickle down, unlike foreign aid, which amounts to little more than poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries.
If we want the developing world to stop being torn apart by brain drain, unemployment, and poverty, if we want to stop these countries from being breeding sumps for terrorism and chaos, we have to give people in these countries a chance to do productive work. That means letting our people buy their products, especially agricultural products, and letting our companies hire them, preferably without having them sneak into our country. There’s no other way to produce real development and give these countries the ability to purchase the goods we can produce efficiently.
Of course this takes time, and of course there are sacrifices. So what? Our economy is growing, profits are up, consumer spending is high. Our unemployment rate is among the lowest in the world, barring those distorted by socialist-style charity jobs. Our per capita income is miles above that of many of the countries to which we are exporting jobs. So why are you telling me that we can’t afford to let our companies give productive work to people who want to work, not to be subsidized? Protectionism, remember, is as much a tax as anything the IRS imposes. It works the other way too. Our companies repatriate profits from all over the world, and the more prosperous other countries are, the more of our stuff they will buy.
it will only work equitably on a level playing field
Free trade is a level playing field. Trying to impose American wages on other countries skews the playing field – if labor will cost as much in Mexico as it does in California, there’s no incentive for companies to go there.
the standard of living is in decline for tens of millions of Americans and an increasing number of states are in serious financial trouble.
Yes, the standard of living in the ‘90s was irrationally and unsustainably high, and that is now correcting. That’s what happens when bubbles break. We can't expect that we can have low-skill workers living upper middle class lifestyles, and keep our products globally competitive at the same time. States are in serious financial trouble because they got accustomed to the ‘90s free ride, and now they have to adjust to competitive realities. These are indeed tough bananas, but no matter what you bleeding-heart liberals say, coddling is neither desirable nor, in the long run, possible. |
