So let me get this straight… Your idea of good geopolitical and economic strategy is to cut the other countries in the world off from trade, so as to keep them poor and unable to provide goods and services to us? How humanitarian of you.
And is it your experience that poverty and desperation leads to good, peaceful neighbors?
The best chance for world peace is for China and India and Iran and everyone else to develop modern, high productivity economies. World wealth increases, and when countries have a lot to lose, and their people are relatively comfortable and happy, they don’t like going to war.
You seem to be laboring under the same misguided assumption that drives so much protectionism. You think that we’re playing a zero-sum game, where there’s a fixed amoount of wealth and we’re all scrambling to see who gets it. This is not the case at all. A wealthy China is a good thing for the world because a wealthy China brings more productivity to the world economy. As a species, we can afford more research, more diversity, more health care, higher environmental standards. A China that freely trades with us, and which clearly has a lot to offer us (because we buy a lot of it) is good for all of us.
Are they competitors? Damned straight they are. And if you let the market do its thing, we’ll compete right back just fine. Just as companies and individuals compete with each other every day for the things they want. Competition isn’t a bad thing. It helps bring focus and clarity. It forces people to try hard, work hard, and study hard and to be efficient and clever. And it replaces the tensions that can build between isolated countries that can lead to war - especially if one is kept much poorer than the other.
The U.S. isn’t going to compete on price for labor, nor should it. The U.S. economy is generally more productive, resourceful, and resilient than any other economy on the planet. The U.S’s comparative advantage isn’t in seamstresses, it’s in computer engineers and efficient manufacturing and advanced services and consulting and so forth. Very high value occupations. But there are clearly enough of the other kinds of jobs, because unemployment is still near historic lows (and please, no nonsense about how the rate is all artificial). The fact is, the United States is fully employed and in better shape to take advantage of the changing economy than any other country.
Have a little faith in your own country. Don’t be afraid of competition. Chinese people have a right to bring their goods to market as well. Even if they chooose not to adopt the same worker standards. If their comparative advantage is cheap labor, then that’s what they need to do to get a leg into world economy. As their wealth grows, their standards will change, just as they have in every other country as it joined the first world.
