China

>”It’s economically productive for the 1% to maintain a trade relationship with China. The financial incentives don’t help any Americans, and in fact, most of us are hurt by this relationship...”

So true, since its inception with GHW, its execution and realization through Clinton and then once fully engaged the timid, supplicant responses from GW and BO, China has contributed to the stagnation of the blue collar worker on America with the full complicity of Democrats, Republicans and most of Industry and even unions who didn’t oppose their cozy politicians. They all only saw starry dollar signs...

That’s where we are now. People have had enough. That’s why they put up with the guy no one likes because he’s willing to sever that codependent relationship.

Now, if you ask any pol running for the nomination who the greatest threat to America is... it’s not going to be China...

The article focuses on human rights abuses which I think is a cogent criticism of China-US trade.

On the economics issue though, readers should know he disagrees with economists, who nearly universally agree that trade with China benefits Americans as a whole, with the caveat that there are concentrated losses in certain populations. Economists are highly certain on this, with uncharacteristically few people responding "uncertain" on the survey [0]. You can go through the other surveys on the IGM Forum to see what more common distributions looks like.

[0] http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/china-us-trade

> On the economics issue though, readers should know he disagrees with economists, who nearly universally agree that trade with China benefits Americans as a whole, with the caveat that there are concentrated losses in certain populations.

The thing is: economists are hardly unbiased and neutral. Their theories are far from scientific truth, and typically embed significant political content.

For instance: "benefit" can be a highly political term. How do "economists" define it and is that the definition we should be using?

This is an interesting article on the subject:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22/economists-globalizatio...

> ECONOMISTS ON THE RUN

> Paul Krugman and other mainstream trade experts are now admitting that they were wrong about globalization: It hurt American workers far more than they thought it would. Did America’s free market economists help put a protectionist demagogue in the White House?

If it wasn’t China, the US would be importing goods from elsewhere.

It’s unlikely the response to not China will be America.

There are reasons to believe the US should still do not China even if it means Bangladesh or Vietnam (in fact, this is exactly what the TPP was supposed to have achieved, and would have better protected worker rights as well as IP...but I guess that wasn’t blunt enough for America).

The US is wealthier than it has ever been thanks to trade abroad. It makes absolutely no sense that the country that has overall benefited the most from trade, is complaining about it.

What the US hasn’t done, is spread the benefits of trade internally. The US economic problems stem from whatever led to a small percentage of the economy pocketing the vast gains. It’s far more likely that tax changes, regulatory changes, and changes in union power have a lot more to do with that than anything else.

But it’s always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner and people have been doing it for millennia, so there’s no reason to believe the US would be immune from it.