As you can imagine, this is a very short list:
- It is clear that neither Clinton nor Bush foresaw that China would become the world’s workshop when they were negotiating the terms of China’s admission to the WTO. The agreement should have provided more protection for American exports and intellectual property.
- The Trump Administration is right to join with the EU in arguing that China is not a “market economy.” Large Chinese firms doing business with the US and Europe are essentially arms of the government, not independent actors. That’s the meaning of the “Chinese dream;” China as a whole prospers, and the benefits are distributed by the government as it sees fit.
That’s it. Just because China is a mercantilist state doesn’t mean that we should behave in the same manner. Our businesses, unlike theirs, are independent agents, and we cannot protect them in the same way. The appropriate response to Chinese state capitalism is to use the rules that are in place to our advantage, not to tear them up and rely solely on our brute market power to get what we want. The latter approach has already failed; the public just doesn’t know it yet.