A Deep Dive into the U.S.-China Relationship

By Matthew McMullan
Sep 21 2016 |
Chinese money, money, money, money …. money! | Photo by Christina B Castro

A very interesting point was made early on in this panel discussion.

There was a very good – excellent! top notch! – set of panel discussions, held today by DC think tank New America, on the big-picture topic of the United States’ relationship with China. It was nice, because this kinda forum takes a big step back from the usual discussion you'd get on China during the presidential election.

As it’s 2016, the people running the show over there filmed the whole thing and put it on YouTube. Thank goodness for that, as the Average Joe doesn’t have six hours in the middle of the day to sit around and watch this stuff.

Yours truly watched some of it, though. And while there were plenty of interesting insights offered into a whole lot of different areas, yours truly thought panelist Jennifer Harris had an interesting observation on why the United States should re-evaluate its basic trade footing in light of a shifting geopolitical scenario.

Harris started off by quoting Robert Gilpin, who said, “The American goal of depoliticized and non-discriminatory trade not only fostered an unprecedented era of world commerce, but it greatly reinforced the harmony of interest between the United States and its allies.”

 She then launched into some recent history:

The current rules-based trading system took root at a time when the neoliberal logic of economic liberalization and freer trade largely aligned with U.S. geopolitical interests.

During the Cold War, we were up against an adversary that had no particular love of free markets nor trade, and so every win for the U.S. in pushing free markets or pushing free trade was also a win in geopolitical terms.

After the Cold War, this divide between neoliberal logic and U.S. geopolitical interests continued in the first few decades, but it didn’t really matter … because we didn’t face an adversary that necessitated revisiting whether this great convenience still held up.

The sort of economic and commercial fights we were having with Japan and with NAFTA were taking place largely in the U.S. security umbrella. But now, as we face a set of rising powers that do not make many of the same distinctions that we do between market and state, and do not hold up freer trade and liberalized markets as ends in their own right …

It’s worth revisiting what makes for good economics still makes for good U.S. geopolitical objectives.

Hmmmm.

Harris didn’t pose the following question, but I’ll ask it here anyway: Is all of this trade with China worth it, especially as our national objectives are forcibly realigned?

Watch the whole dang New America forum here.