Free trade. It is a brilliant thing, conceptually. However, to look at it conceptually is to miss real world implications. Trade, like life, doesn’t happen within the happy confines of a vacuum. It takes place in the real world. There are not only rational actors, but, also irrational. Trade, in the real world, implicates more than just two corporations doing business. It moves the bottom line of each nation’s assets – from one unto another. If all nations were governed by peace loving doves, this would not pose a problem. Unfortunately, there are not many lovers’ of peace to be found leading nation states. For instance, China openly seeks world supremacy. Meanwhile, the largest importer of Chinese goods is the U.S. In fact, the U.S. accounts for over 18% of Chinese exports. They make our iPhones, our clothing, our trinkets, and, our useless junk. But, they also make our PPE, provide the ingredients for producing our antibiotics, and countless other items critical to our nation’s health. What’s more, the Chinese Government is keenly aware of this fact, and, have threatened to cut off our access to such supplies, if we don’t do as they bid us to do.
It may well be the case that unfettered free trade benefits a business within a nation, but, it does not extend, from that, that the nation wherein the benefitting business is a citizen, has also benefitted. Furthermore, that the consumer can purchase goods of equal quality at a lesser cost is not necessarily even a benefit for that consumer. Consider the situation in which The United States currently finds Itself. For decades, The U.S. has been the most reliable pillar in the Chinese Economy. Our large businesses have benefitted from cheap labor, and, have leveraged it to provide untold numbers of products for less money than they could ever be produced for, domestically. The consumer cheered, and, voraciously consumed. Everyone was happy, except for the Communist Chinese Government. Oh, don’t get me wrong – they were happy to take our money. However, their stated goal is to topple the U.S. as a world superpower. Indeed, the goal of China is to become THE superpower. When your number one trading partner seeks global supremacy, and, where achieving such can only come at your expense, then, no matter the current benefit, derived in the form of cheap consumer goods, your nation is not benefitting.
So, what’s a nation to do? Well, for starters, fully abandon the notion that unfettered free trade is a de facto benefit for both nations. Cheaper goods cannot offset the cost of filling your adversary’s coffers. If the aims of the exporting nation are to create a world in which the importing nation is less prominently featured, then, it doesn’t matter how cheap the goods are, the importer is losing more than they are gaining. This is especially true when the exporter is China, as they have the population to militarily, and economically, advance their agenda. The Trump administration has sought to “level the playing field,” and, has used tariffs to try to bring China to the negotiating table, but, this is sticking a ban-aid on a gunshot wound to the jugular. Even the aims of this effort are amiss. This shouldn’t be a conversation about currency valuations, or, stolen IP. This ought to be a conversation about those with whom we choose to do business.
We must evaluate our aims, as a nation, when settling on a particular policy. If we believe that Democracy is to be supported, and, embraced, then, why are we chiefly doing business with Communist Autocrats? Surely, the sum of our parts cannot be that we will trade all principles and values for cheap stuff? Our trading partners must be limited to the nations with whom we have a shared interest, and, must include a subsidy to domestic manufacturers, when the product in question is critical to the health and security of our nation. Anything less represents a deliberate acquiescence to a known existential threat. It is suicide – or else, it is the murder of our collective progeny. China has made it clear that it seeks to supplant the U.S., and, it can only be concluded that, with every trade, the importer of Chinese goods, as well as the complicit Administration that permits it to occur, respectively, engage in nothing less than base treason.
To the critic who complains that finding new trading partners will be expensive, and, economically disruptive, my response is nothing short of Aristotelean: when will you ever take your medicine? When will you ever do the hard thing, which, in one’s own interest, must be done? Will you ever stop supporting those who tell you what you want to hear, over the clearly superior wisdom which comes at a cost? We experience an ever more painful cycle of boom and bust, delaying the day of reckoning, in so many areas of our economy. However, free trade with China is the one day of reckoning which, having been indefinitely delayed, until such time as no more delays were permissible, will have become insurmountable. Financial struggles can be overcome; an enemy that utterly controls, and cuts off, the supply chain, cannot.
thereluctantcommentator 