The question is: Does America deserve Donald Trump?
25
Trump is obsessed with the trade imbalance with China thinking that the deficit is like one of his many money losing business. This is something he thinks he understands and by bullying he can get a suppliers price down. Does not work like that.
And the team? Navarro is not just ignorant of trade but he has such a warped view of things he is dangerous. Lighthizer is a lawyer first and political hack second. Mnuchin? How does a hedge fund and Hollywood prepare you for China. Is there an adult in this room?
If Trump insists on winning, that means Xi loses face. Look out.
27
For the first time I can remember, Friedman actually makes sense.
21
Friedman is one of the few that understand what is behind the curtain in dealing with China. However, since he works for the NYT, that guarantees that no one in the Trump administration will even pay attention to his column. (that pesky dunning-kruger is just embedded in the Trump Inc administration)
12
World struggle over trade and security
are not made better with wrecking balls to existing
agreements, whom ever is disadvantaged.
Some intelligence, nuance, and medium run thinking is required, pooling the wisdom of our wisest China experts.
All Trump does is make it up on the spot. He's a child at the adult's table. Things will be worse because he is president
12
Oh, wait. So, Trump has to stop tweeting and quietly get to work, huh? DUDE. WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN? HAVE YOU NO POWERS OF OBSERVATION AT ALL?
Sir, if you write things that are moronic, no one will want to read you anymore.
10
So basically one big bully kicked the other big bully in the chins and now they both stand and face each other in the school yard and wonder what's next. I know that trump doesn't have a clue so my money is on China to take the next step. Hopefully all of these steps do not lead to war.
12
I hate to admit this but for once I am liking something coming out of this disastrous presidency. We need this bull in China’s shop!
17
For someone who is well versed in foreign policy, Mr Friedman, you have a monolithic thinking. Xi and Trump may deserve each other but China and America don't deserve all the calamities they bring.
Xi is one person even if he is president for life but there are 1.3B Chinese many of whom still remember fondly Nixon, Carter and even Obama. Turning China into Democratic country in the long run is what the Chinese people deserve. Trump drags not only America but the rest of the world back in the regressive era. No one deserves that
24
TPP, was going to give the US and the Asia Pacific countries leverage against China, Trump squashed that and we are now a less leveraged position with China.
19
I have not read any comments about the fact that Trump is pursuing the China file unilaterally, with no support sought or obtained from other similarly situated countries. (Two years ago I would have called such countries “allies” but Trump’s America has no allies, only adversaries of differing degrees of antagonism.)
Trump’s unilateral approach will fail for three reasons (at least). In a global world one country, even a big one, cannot control trade. Second, Trump is such a buffoon, surrounded by buffoons (Larry Kudlow) that was it will be easy for China to tell its own people to ride out the storm. Finally Trump knows only winning and bragging about winning. Will insist on winning against Xi, yet Xi cannot and will not be seen to be a loser.
15
Values matter? But what are American values? How to cheat and bully the rest of the world, then scream and whine like a baby that you are getting cheated? American values certainly don't entail good governance. American neoliberal capitalist values are destroying the entire planet by breeding greed and suicidal short-term thinking. If "values matter" it is certainly not clear to me that American values should be ascendant because the real American values - the ones that actually govern the actions of the US state - are rooted in a selfish and shallow destructiveness that is proving to be detrimental to the whole planet. After all, it is not China that is blocking progress on climate change, the single most important issue of the day. What I find most galling about this article is its hypocrisy. There is nothing that China is accused of doing here that the US has not done. The US has spied on the entire world, it has required its companies to help it do it, it has subsidized its technological and military industries to the tune of trillions of dollars, it has staged interventions around the world to protect the interests of its businesses. The need for a counterbalance to restrain the US has never been greater. If that is China, that's fine. This effort to destroy the Chinese economy will only force China to become more self-sufficient and even more difficult to manage.
27
I smell a whiff of testosterone in the air. The beaten American soul found a savior. A wreaking ball that will alleviate its self inflicted humiliation and economic malaise. Donald Trump, the wreaker in chief, who specialize in wrecking everything. Allies, democracy, whatever.
It's a long time since I read such a stupid headline in any political analysis. China did nothing that other country wouldn't do under similar circumstances, given the chance. with patience, determination, shrewdness and brilliant management, with great sacrifices of its dirt poor populace and environment, it used the world's appetite - especially America's - for cheap products, baiting manufacturing companies with a potentially vast market, cheap labor and great profits. But there were hooks in the bait and America, blinded by greed, willingly got hooked up. China never promised to become a democracy, remain a third world economy or give up on its geopolitical ambitions. It's the west's greed that for over decades enabled the present situation.
I don't have a shred of sympathy to China but I have to admit its brilliance in pulling out hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and becoming the economic powerhouse that it is. What the world needs now is not a pathetic wreaking ball but a bunch of wise, determined diplomats - if there are any left in the US - who will quietly work behind the scenes to accomplish a fair trade deal that will benefit both sides. I am convinced It's possible.
20
Maybe trump shouldn’t have bailed on the TPP. That looked to be a good first step in putting China in check
8
This is exactly right. Trump is doing what so many former Presidents were too cowardly and hamstrung by the diplomatic corps to execute. It's exactly what we need. He is definitely the American President China deserves.
10
It is possible that the Chinese may have taken advantage of the US Corporations and it is time that China changes its behavior.
Having said this, however the sanctimonious tone Mr. Friedman and others in western world generally take in writing about the Chinese and other non-white nations is hurtful. I wonder if they would consider following historical context before spanking the nonwhite nations to get them to behave in an approved manner.
1) Clearly, the practice of “stealing the technologies” was not very uncommon during the early stages of the Industrial Revolutions in western world. What we consider as “fair and square” rules were agreed upon only when the gap between the western nations narrowed sufficiently. It may be helpful to remember that the Western world, its leaders and its media, spoke in unison and in the same tone about Japan of stealing and needing to be taught a lesson as Japan began to catch up.
2) Mr. Friedman and media might want to keep in mind that the wealth of western corporations is an enormous advantage over most of the non-white nations barring Japan, Taiwan, Korea and now a new member China. This wealth allows the Western Corporations to “play by the rules” in acquiring technologies by “paying” for them. However it is important to note that early investors in the western world growth were unwilling nonwhite colonies and slaves in America. It may behoove us to be little modest in preaching to the newly developing nonwhite nations.
115
It is healthy for the world to worry about being observed by Huawai in the same way that it should be doing it with Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and thousands of other companies and countless satellites of some countries abusively disposing of our privacy
WTO is not a good example of fair trade. Historically it has been a mechanism of the richest countries to tip the balance of trade in their favor, especially in the highly subsidized agricultural and livestock sectors where many underdeveloped countries derive their livelihoods.
5
It will take more than tariffs to slow China’s growth. China is busy developing trade and investments with many parts of the world. lithium in South America, oil and gas infrastructure in the Middle East and Africa. China has its eyes on the whole Eurasian continent. Trump’s go it alone policies are working against all of our trading partners. The economic world is getting closer together and the U.S. has to find a way to be part of it.
7
China does not need America anymore. America is in a quagmire of wars and potential wars. Supply lines are thin and strategic minerals, chemicals,vaccines and basic drugs are a supply side choke point for the USA. The Just In Time inventory mentality with USA companies will feed absolute disruption even with just a go slow at the Chinese exit ports. Cooperation is the only way for a beneficial future for the 100 million Americans with nothing saved and the rest of them on some sort of sedative, marijuana, alcohol or opioids.
2
It is important to not ignore Defense & Military power in this analysis. China amassed tremendous wealth from us, and now is attempting to challenge us, and our allies in Asia and elsewhere, militarily.
The bottom line is that China like Russia, has a Mafiaoso styled Government. The are focussed on expanding their Military might against the interests and stability of India, SE Asia, the Philippines, and Australia. All of the countries (excepting Philippines/Duerte) are aligned as freedom oriented. China is not. Russia is not.
Russia, IMO, is also concerned with Chinese expansion, and being aligned with NK since the Korean war ended, is likely assisting in strengthening Kim's military plans. Which would give Russia a formidable ally next door to China. Not sure that Russia will actually allow NK to have nuclear weapons, but it seems that Putin's relationship with Trump will be in Russia's favor; not ours, nor our allies.
With all of this in mind, as much as I despise Trump, he has at least shown the Democrats that we have been naive in empowering China, and also that we need to present a strong economic deterrent to financially empowering them further.
There are other countries ready to step up, and one of them is America, and our own people.
Nationalism first, globalism second is a political imperative.
This fact could not be any clearer for any Democrat who wants to help its party regain a dignified status. Focus on education, American businesses, and being Green.
7
China will do what it has to do to develop and improve the standard of living of its Country, which is much lower than the US's. Trump expects that he can squeeze the China economy to further improve the US's economy with negotiations that are neither win win nor strategic. China is playing chess and Trump is playing checkers.
4
China didn’t buy more of our goods in exchange for our buying tons of theirs: they bought US Treasuries that keep us afloat. And anyone who thought economic reform would lead to a more open society doesn’t understand the imperatives and fears of the Chinese regime.
4
I tend to agree. Not sure that a Democrat president would have dared to question that China does what the US does.
5
What a great read. And I cannot believe there is something that Trump believes in, that aligns with my beliefs as well.
9
I strongly agree with the article; fair trade must be achieved; we cannot continue giving away our technology, competitive advantage, and jobs to an unfair adversary
10
It's time for Pelosi and McConnell to sit down with Trump and explain to him that tariffs will not enrich the US Treasury. That all Americans pay for tariffs, not the China. Furthermore that Trump needs to make a deal with China at this point in time. They need to explain to Trump that if he can't get a deal done now, both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate will start moving forward on impeachment for him followed by indictments for his family. That should help our dear President focus.
8
Trump was elected, in large part, to disrupt the norm. China is now feeling that disruption. The US presidents for the past 30 years have avoided the pain of being tough with China and others and finally Trump is dealing with it.
7
This is one of Friedman's most coherent column in decades and it is on a topic of huge importance. He presents the absolute necessity of strong action, set against the big obstacles. Comments show a lot of begrudging agreement that American push back is long overdue. But.. then, so many of those same people can't wait to hate on the president with the fortitude to finally confront China. You can't have it both ways. Yes, Trump is dislikable in MANY ways, but he is the only president in modern memory with any guts. The real world is not a pretty place.
8
As always, Friedman is amazingly logical and balanced in his approach. I am not a big fan of Trump but on China, Trump got it right. However, Trump has to fine-tune his game to beat the Chinese. Several weeks ago, we were trying to source a knitting factory to make certain fabrics for a defense project and it was shocking to find out there are no knitting factories left in the US that can produce a decent quantity. Most major factories have closed in the US and the Chinese have taken over the production. It is not a pretty situation and something has to be done asap. If we start it now, it may take 5-10 years to see the effect.
8
Trust and the rule of law? Has Friedman read the Snowden report. US security agencies demanding encryption codes and backdoors, planting spy chips into computers sold overseas, and spying on friends and foes alike. And for all this talk of trade he ignores the billions western investors hold in Chinese companies, including state companies and banks. US investors made themselves very very rich off of early investments into Alibaba, Tencent and others. Instead of trying to repress Chinese companies, just co-invest, and let them invest here. Its a multi-centric world, get use to it.
10
Trump's mindlessly antagonistic disposition toward the Chinese is sadly very typical of the American mindset these days - blame other countries for your own mess. It is American corporations who moved their jobs to China to cut costs at the expense of American workers, and it is American consumers who want goods as cheap as possible and obsess over name brands. It is China's prerogative to seize whatever opportunities that they come across, and that's what they did; there's nothing "unfair" or "evil" about it.
10
It made me laughing for several minutes. Every competitor can make bussiness in China including Cisco, Juniper, Nokia and Ericson, but Huawei was always blocked by US government.
____
"But the Chinese government has curbed competition against Huawei in China — by both foreign and Chinese companies — to enable Huawei to grow bigger, more quickly and cheaply. Huawei then uses that clout and pricing power to undercut Western telecoms and then uses its rising global market dominance to set the next generation of global 5G telecom standards around its own technologies, not those of Qualcomm or Sweden’s Ericsson."
2
What happens if we cut down on all of our purchases from China? We allowed and encouraged China to be a manufacturing hub. China is not the only place where we can buy or seek our purchasing needs.
What happens if our Corporations, start pulling out of China and relocate elsewhere. There are several other locations in the quest for outside investments, our technology and know how, and relationship.
It is such a shame that there is no TPP, and we did not allow that to materialize.
It is time we adopt these alternative scenarios. China is not a trustful trading partner. We see that in this Opinion.
4
China’s played America for a fool for far too long.
The reset The President is pushing is long overdue.
4
@Gary
But Trump's "methods" will fail.
2
The West needs to wake up to the economic threat China poses. If we lose it will be generations before we can recover. It threatens our Currency, Trade, Government Revenue which in turn threaten our Social Security, Medicare, Military, etc.
American consumers need to put unrelenting pressure on American companies manufacturing goods in China for sale outside of China. China is the largest Authoritarian government in Human History. What is the American Left and Right thinking? Boycott Apple, etc. until they move at least half of the manufacturing to other WTO friendly countries. This is the Apartheid of our century. Get up, get out and do something for for the world. You are not helping the Chinese people by supporting the Jinping Communists.
7
When we talk to China about equal trade, it must completely equal. Why can Chinese companies operate in the U.S., taking advantage of our open market but does not allow A&T, T-Mobile, and all the banks to conduct business in China? We see Chinese banks popping up in the U.S., but American banks are not allowed to open its offices in China to serve Chinese people. Why Chinese companies can have IPOs in the U.S. stock market to collect funds from Americans, while no American companies can have IPO in China and collect funds from Chinese people? These issues must be resolved before any equal trade can happen. The Chinese government is now using the internet and WeChat to fan up patriotism among Chinese citizens. They feel it's the Korean War time.
1
Good points, but the method is worse than the madness. Trump has absolutely no idea of what he is doing. Instead of employing firm but fair diplomacy (a word he cannot even spell) and insisting upon compliance he can do nothing but use a hammer - his only tool, and the same one he has always used in all of his failed ventures.
What this Dotard promises is undeliverable with any certainty. The Chinese don’t trust him, WE don’t trust him and we don’t have many allies left - and THEY don’t trust him. He will not rape this nation much longer - the Chinese know that. They will seek a lasting and open relationship with a competent human, not Trump. He only hurts us all to impress himself with his “brilliance” - not.
7
China Deserves Donald Trump, says the top of this column. Wait, Trump vs. China isn't over yet; it's just getting started and China has barely started to fight back. The fallout is more important than the gratification of seeing China saddled with tariffs. In this fight, Trump has thrown a few punches but the winner is yet uncertain.
2
Meanwhile our coral reefs are dying, I haven’t seen a honey bee in a decade, bats, olive and citrus trees are all dying. Will humans ever realize that we have one ecosystem, one planet to cherish and pass on to our children?
11
Of course, the problem is that all the stuff that Mr. Friedman says matter do not matter to our president. So how does this end?
4
Shame on Obama and the Democrats for not dealing aggressively with China in the past. We now have a buffoon like Trump taking on one of our most complex issues. This is what happens when the Democratic party spends all their time fighting everything Trump WITHOUT intelligent policy platforms dealing with today's challenging issues.
One suggestion not mentioned would be to expose China's Road and Belt initiative for what it really is; an attempt to exploit the natural resources of poorer countries. This initiative is built on loans that if defaulted on and we did not let China extract natural resources for payments, might challenge Chinese wealth and attempted domination.
3
This is such a complex issue that intertwines so many topics that impact the average Americans' lives. It would be interesting to here more detail from Mr. Friedman on the potential implications of a continued "hard line" stance against China's economic, military, social and trade policies. I am speculating that the next economic collapse that the US and likely the globe faces is the result of a collapse of cordial relations with our largest trading partner. I don't have an answer and suspect no one does, but the Trump teams "wrecking ball "approach to this topic is I'm sure not the ultimate right answer.
3
As a Chinese American citizen, I found it very chauvinistic and offensive to say "China deserves Trump". Has Trump or his predecessors tried to change China's business practice through a coalition with other western countries, but failed? No, he went directly below the belt, using high tariffs to scare away foreign investments in China, and bullying Huawei on the paranoia or excuses for national security. There is no single solid evidence to support Trump's suspicion of cyberspying through Huawei's 5G products. Trump's policies are flank bullying, and it will spur a whole generation of Chinese's antagonism towards Americans...and we just shrug as if that does not matter?! How arrogant that is!
8
China will be patient even possibly to the point of waiting for a new administration in the U.S. before signing any significant deal.
2
I wonder how many posters here — who are critical of Trump and our government’s need to get tough with China — ever considered that if they were Chinese and voiced similar opinions about their government, their views would never be published and they would likely suffer negative consequences?
4
How does any democrat expect this policy to be extended when (a) none of the candidates discuss China and (b) Joe Biden, the leading contender, has said China isn't competition?
To say you wish for this to be continued is a fool's errand. It will die if Trump isn't re-elected.
4
Perhaps, but we certainly don't.
1
Trumps nothing but a game player.
Great article. But I have to take exception to "dual use". Technology has been dual use since the caveman picked up a spear to kill a mastodon or saber toothed tiger. Another caveman used that same tool to spear and kill a caveman that he didn't like. The Nobel Peace Prize is funded by the inventor of dynamite. He intended its use for blasting rock in coal mines. He was horrified by men using dynamite to blow up human beings. Dual use!!!
1
A human wrecking ball indeed. Unfortunately the Stable Genius wrecking ball does not create a better structure, just a smashed up one.
2
"If Chinese Intelligence demand access to 5g", since when did Chinese Intelligence ask for permission? Chinese Intelligence and military see the worlds adoption of it's 5g technology as your enemies inviting them in and giving them the combination to your safe. Mr. Friedman is being very naïve thinking the intelligence organizations in China "ask" for permission. They probably have their own coders at Huawei inserting multiple "back doors" into their 5g installations and servers. If China's foes invite them in freely why should the Chinese say no.
3
Nobody deserves Donald Trump.
Not even Donald Trump.
3
No one deserves Donald Trump.
8
Trump's interruption of Huauai's expansion is seen as a ham-handed approach to our version of restricting international competition in favor of US industry. China can just as easily restrict the semiconductor industry from expending within China for the same reasons. I am not sure this administration really understands this point.
4
Hard to believe liberals are agreeing with Trump on things. Fixing relationship with Russia and going hard on China is the proper way to go. The west has to prove to the world that they are not only good at destroying communism (liberal way of thinking) e.g SSSR, but are good at fixing things. Helping Ukraine and Russia rebuild their relationship must be a priority. Even if that means making Ukraine more mobilized to use force.
3
How can we trade fairly? China doesn't pay a living wage to many of its workers and the benefits provided are not similar to our own. They do not have to address environmental restrictions the way we do. They have access to our mail system at stunningly less cost than US companies. We haven't put a price on all the tech they have stolen, the government subsidies to their industries, the violation of trade agreements. Maybe tariffs should take these realities into consideration so there can be real fair trade. And provide incentives for China to address each of these legitimate issues on the world stage. Slapping on tariffs without clear reasons and clear goals isn't helpful.
3
Trump may seem to be what China deserves, but ultimately justice and universal human dignity requires comprehensive government and international law. Trump may seem to provide a push back against China, but that is both temporary and inherently bi-lateral.
It's extraordinarily unpopular in the United States to argue for more international law and for reinforcing systems of international justice. But its lack of popularity does not at all diminish its necessity. China and other countries, including our own, must relax a degree of their sovereignty in order for all of us on the planet, present and future, to survive.
Trump's bellicosity and his combativeness are no substitute for fairness and reason. Trump's nationalism is not a reliable protector of appropriate international economic conditions.
1
Why is it that Presidents who proclaim america first and the heck with everybody else, after a short time end up ranting and raving about nothing but foreign policy, foreign governments and foreign wars.
4
I wonder to what extent our CEO's are responsible for the China problem. Stealing of intellectual property is unacceptable.of course but when the Chinese technologically behind offered to open up their immense market to our corporations they wanted the sharing of technology in return. It made sense. Our CEO's were free to agree or to refuse as several German outfits did because they were thinking about the future implications while our CEO's were concentrating on their year end bonus
Who know how it will wind up?
7
@asell1: You can take the factory out of a country, but you can't take the trade secrets out of the factory.
2
Past presidents were weaklings in facing China b/c they held the same values Tom shows in this article: they didn't care about the offshoring of low skilled, simple manufacturing, thinking China had the competitive advantage. Perhaps they were right, but that led to the anger and resentment that fueled Trump's election. We care when the issue is important to the elite (technology), less so when its important to the blue collar class (steel, cars, tennis shoes).
I think Trump happens to be right on China. Sure wish we were taking China on with a coordinated front of Europe (nope, we'd rather spit at our longstanding allies) and the Asian countries that also fear China's dominance, (nope, TPP was a "disaster"). That would have been a far easier trade war to "win" than going it alone.
7
Finally a boast that Trump can honestly claim “I am the greatest wrecking ball EVER to get elected in the history of the WORLD!!!”
3
I hate to ask this, Tom, but is your kid-gloves and beyond-the-usual-centrist treatment of Trump in your recent columns—
Related at all to Trump’s rhetoric and actions regarding Israel? [RE Iran, etc.]
4
While I respect Mr. Friedman, the argument around 5G is weak. Anyone with a good engineering background would know Telecom hardware, once deployed, is in control of the Telecom, not Huawei.
To suspect a piece of hardware would steal your info is laughable. It's perfectly fine to say "US wants to destroy Huawei before it's too late to do so" because at least it is honest. Just don't sugar-coat the hatred, please.
8
The west was always too eager to give China everything they wanted while demanding little in return, and continuing to turn a blind eye to state-sponsored corporate espionage, a total disregard for intellectual property rights, currency manipulation, corruption, and human rights violations.
Keeping in character, Trump is going about things all wrong, and is in many ways cutting off his nose to spite his face. But he correctly identified a problem that needs to be addressed, and should have been, going back at least 25 years.
10
“Free trade” carries a danger. The honest may be cheated and the ‘cheater’ may win! Who is the honest and who the ‘cheat’ may also vary with the beholder! But these can be sorted out and fixed by the International Trade Organizations and courts. There is a different type of danger which Vladimir Lenin put it succinctly: “When the time comes to hang the Capitalist, he can be trusted to sell us the ‘rope’ for a fair profit”!
Are we the suckers and Trump the Savior?
Trump undoubtedly deserves the credit for raising the problem and pursuing it --- in the only way he knows and relishes. Had he confronted China with the combined might of our allies and trading partners, the pressure on China would have been formidable and the burden on the American farmers and consumers less. Even for China, the “deal” would have been less onerous. But the POTUS’s “America First” mantra would not allow him to share the prize or the glory with Germany or Japan!
4
I concur exactly with Tom Friedman. This is the big one!
2
How did you fail to mention Trump pulling out of TPP and this ill thought out move's role in getting us to the trade war we're in now? Also, are you implying Boeing is privy to no government subsidy - not to mention the $30b of taxpayer money recently given to farmers due to Trump's knee jerk decisions on China trade? So as long as American businesses are printing money by exploiting China at the cost of American jobs all is ok for the 1% and our lawmakers but as soon as China starts to actually compete with US corporate profits the rules have to be changed and we need to "protect American interests". Once again, corporate socialism but raw capitalism for the people. And give me a break about corporate theft - both Apple and Microsoft stole the mouse and GUI from Xerox and the tech theft since then has been rampant. China is just participating in the American corporate dream - theft, subsidies, tax evasion, etc. America is 100% a corporatocracy and that needs to be stated unequivocally as the playing field. Therefore your article fails to honestly address the actual situation and cherry-picks which I find unacceptable for an op-ed in the NYT.
13
@C. Ashford: A patent is only standing to file a lawsuit alleging infringement by a competitor. At the pace US courts process lawsuits, patents tend to expire before courts decide.
1
Tougher trade with China: picture all those vacant Walmart stores.
4
nearly 700 Wallmart and Sam's Club
stores in China. In Kunming last year a Chinese bank manager asked me.." oh does America have Wallmart too?"
2
Why shouldn't I view globalization as a threat to democracy,human rights and the rule of law?
3
I wonder....IF China infiltrates our country through Huawei 5G technology as suggested in this Op-Ed, can they arrange to give us the same high speed rail that they have which gets them from Hong Kong to Beijing in 8 hours (roughly NY to Florida), almost the same it takes from DC to Boston? How about getting Russia out of our "free elections"? Teach us how to count votes so we don't have a repeat of Bush v. Gore, a presidential election decided by a politicized Supreme Court by one vote? My musings aren't purely rhetorical, ladies and gentlemen, but are meant to point out that perhaps our own country and our own values aren't as defensible or sustainable as we think they are. When the president of China can point to our 2016 election and tell his people "you want THAT? THAT is democracy?" and as we view our charlatan-president shredding our liberties daily, might Huawei not bring some possible benefits to our lives in the final analysis?
13
I have long thought that would what would become China's Achilles' Heel would not be socialism, state capitalism, or repression. It would be stealing. Everyone from whom the Chinese stole technology will be waiting for China to develop something worth stealing so that they can get even.
4
One way to slow the transfer of trade secrets to China is to limit the number of Chinese students at US universities. This could be a wake up call for President Xi.
6
Mr. Friedman, while you're usually on-point, this column leaves me wondering about the direct and underlying meaning of your fine prose.
Are you trying to say that Trump's egomania, bluster, lack of diplomatic experience, ineptitude regarding international trade and economics, arrogance, and general "knownothingness" led him to accidentally do a beneficial act in regards to China's cheating ways over the past couple of decades?
Or, are you trying to say that Trump understands the logic of your arguments, and actually planned everything, using the force of his outrageous, mostly obnoxious, personality traits to subdue China?
If the latter, may I suggest that you've sadly come under the spell of the Trump cult.
12
I urge Thomas and other commentators to explain how the US has historically done many of the same things we now accuse China of doing: supporting our industries by tariffs (e.g. trucks), tax structures (e.g.. Amazon not paying any). etc etc. and how the NSA gives our government access to anything they care to listen to or take from other governments using cyber weapons.
In these trade talks, I 'd like to see more reciprocity - what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
8
"And then add one more thing: The gap in values and trust between us and China is widening, not narrowing. For decades, America and Europe tolerated a certain amount of cheating from China on trade, because they assumed that as China became more prosperous — thanks to trade and capitalist reforms — it would also become more open politically. That was happening until about a decade ago."
And yet, time and time again, you, Mr. Friedman, kept arguing that China was our friends, China was trading fair, and that everything was sunshine, rainbows and lollypops, but it wasn't, was it?
Thankfully we have woken up to the constantly and blatant dishonestly of China before it was too late.
Had we listened to you, Mr. Friedman, we would never have woken up.
1
The article gives a broader understanding and supports President Trump's instinct, position and posturing with China on trade and that's reassuring and totally fine but I wish the article included some facts e.g. trade deficit, facts around all kinds of concessions China gets, currency manipulation and more - how all these put US and other countries are at peril when doing business with China
1
We have good friends who are organic farmers in California, they are suffering , good friends work for the federal government and there holidays were destroyed with the government shutdown. In a democracy why is it that we have one person in charge who is destroying everyone's lives, and the GOP give us empty worthless words and support this insanity.
American corporations in there search for more profits have put the American people in a position that is a no win. Politicians never stood up for the American people when all of our jobs were being shipped overseas because they didnt want to pay Americans decent wages. Well we are in the dark ages and people better learn there history before they make ridiculous comments.
We will never recover from this episode because Trump is destroying America and some of the comments are rooting him on..
4
Hate to say it Tom but globalization is dead. Why do you think we have such a huge discrepancy in wealth and income in the US? What is the CEOS and Executive ranks still have very high paying jobs, middle and entry level positions have been outsourced to either China and India or the lowest cost zone. What the developed world got for that is cheap stuff lot's of it. Stuff will cost more if it is made here but maybe we will take better care of things or wear fewer clothes. Would that be so bad? Not sure globalization continues because the 80 percent of the population that serves each other hamburgers trying to make ends meet won't be fooled again.
2
While I agree with TF's analysis, he essentially ignores China's biggest human right's issue: the Uiygers living under increasing human rights violations in the Western Province. Why Thomas Freedom (who supported Bush's Gulf War) continues to ignore Muslim suffering is beyond me.
2
"For it to end well, Trump will have to stop with his juvenile taunting of China on Twitter (and talking about how trade wars are 'easy' to win) ... " Then it won't end well. The man is simply incapable of such restraint, on this or any issue.
6
Corporate America’s unquenchable thirst for profit is the reason we find ourselves in this situation today.
7
@Tommybee; Thanks TB, just what I was going to comment.
1
We have paid a heavy price for this presidency. Let's make sure that certain aspects of his term survive. We don't want to be taken for chumps again.
1
Great article Mr. Friedman, as always. I envy all those you have mentored.
Without agreeing with the conclusions Thomas Friedman draws in his “Human Wrecking Ball” column, we can agree that China has not played fair, particularly with the United States, for many years.
In 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), which had a history of being slow, and although the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) is faster, it deals only with goods, not services.
Most importantly, we should recall that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would have prevented the juggernaut of China from reaching its present dominance. The TPP was signed by the U.S. in February 2016, and was opposed by candidate Trump, who announced his vague “America First” policy. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell never brought the TPP to a vote in deference to Trump.
On January 23, 2017, President Trump signed a memo to withdraw from the TPP, so it was never ratified by the U.S. Notably, Bernie Sanders had loudly joined Trump in opposing the TPP.
Deng Xiaoping had opened China’s markets in 1978, and isolationist Ronald Reagan agreed to trade with China, but he placed restrictions on importing Japanese cars. Nearly all Republicans predicted how much America needed the Chinese to buy American goods and services. The reality quickly became how much stuff of every imaginable type was being exported to the U.S.
We created the big, bad China, just as we created the big, bad Donald Trump. America needs someone more adept very badly, contrary to the Friedman observation.
3
And wouldn't it be smart to confront China's misbehavior as part of a united front with our allies in Europe instead of pigheadedly alienating them and insisting that we act like a lone spaghetti-western gunslinger?
6
He never suggest we in the USA deserve Trump, but whatever. So often Mr Friedman writes the banal and obvious stuff anyway, such as the conclusion:
**Either the U.S. and China find a way to build greater trust — so globalization can continue apace and we can grow together in this new era — or they won’t. In which case, globalization will start to fracture, and we’ll both be poorer for it.**
Start to fracture?
And for our part, we’re going to start closing some of the 800 military bases we have around the world, so that we have funds available to fight the real enemy of all of us, global warming & pollution & overpopulation.
3
Lighthizer seems to be the adult in the room for these negotiations, as he was for the revised NAFTA talks.
2
As has been stated China wants to shut off its citizens from the rest of the world but it wants total access to the world markets. The NYTs reported on Midwest blue collar voters that have embraced Trump are strongly in support of his anti China demagoguery. So more of the same until 2020 seems likely.
3
China grew economically because America export manufacturing overseas due to greedy corporate practices. Resulting in the gutted middle class who in turn can no longer afford to make purchases. That in turns lead to the dying of retail businesses. A viscious cycle.
American companies are to blame.
3
Trump is wrong about most everything, but occasionally he’s right in the same way a broken clock tells the right time twice a day. And his populist and racist instincts may happen to have guided him in a positive direction in the case of China. But he knows next to nothing about accomplishing reasonable ends on trade. Tariffs are a fool’s tool, hurting us as much as them, and risking long term damage to our trading relationships.
Our bargaining position would be infinitely stronger if we had cooperative allies helping us present a united front. Instead, we’ve alienated almost everyone but Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. We also gave up the Transpacific Partnership, dramatically lessening our bargaining power, and encouraging those disadvantaged parties to reach their own individual accommodations with an aggressive Chinese powerhouse.
I have very little confidence Trump can pull off any win-win trade deal with China, or really any deal that leaves us better off. NAFTA 1.1 is mostly a joke, lots of sound and fury with little accomplished. And Trump now has much bigger fish to fry that are much closer to home. Like how he avoids impeachment without precipitating a constitutional crisis.
4
interesting comments here: some more persuasive than others. my concern is, how can we tell if these comments are bloggers/hackers coming from adversaries?
It was a no brainer to spot the China problem but I suspect that the don’t mess with the crazy guy strategy will never produce an acceptable long term outcome. That same strategy applied elsewhere has left us more isolated and in a less powerful negotiating position as has the Trump induced exploding deficit. I’m not sure that Trump even cares as long as his base is enjoying his deranged tough guy act.
Trump is a bandit. Whatever trade negotiations he makes will be greatly influenced and affected by his desire for personal enrichment. He would sell out America in a heartbeat if he thought it would benefit the Trump family. The Chinese know this and will work that angle. So beware of who you see as our potential savior.
4
Did Mr. Friedman ever consider that U.S. deserved Donald Trump? It certainly is the antiquated U.S. Constitution with the electoral college and the rage from middle America over the fast paced social and economic changes in the last 40 years which paved the way of Trumpism.
For a self styled international expert Mr. Friedman is remarkably near sighted. If he bothered to read Xi's itinerary for the last few days when he visited the starting point of the Red Army's Long March he would know the China is preparing for the start of decoupling with U.S.. If he read the interview of Chinese media with CEO of Huawei he would know Huawei has been preparing for the eventuality more than 10 years ago and will have a new OS unifying mobile, computer, notebook, and others for 5G in a few months.
Certainly the comments here from Trump supporters and anti-Trumpers in bashing China as a unifying villain for daring to challenge the supremacy of American Empire is not a surprise.
2
This article, mistakingly suggests that Trump is having an impact. The TPP which Hillary Clinton negotiated (and for political expediency then refuted) was our best leverage to get China to negotiate constructively. When Trump unilaterally canceled it without using it as a negotiating chip, China correctly concluded that Trump is a buffoon as a negotiator. Then when they saw all the concessions he made to North Korea with nothing in return, their impression of him was only confirmed. Trump is having an impact on the American press, but not on Chinese negotiators. They will just wait him out, and wait till he concedes everything for the sake of maintaining votes in the farm belt.
3
I cannot help but look at the history post WW-II and wonder how the heck we got here. Once the dust from that settled it was the Cold War and the "free world vs the Commies." Communism was supposed to be defeated, no matter the flavor: Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, whatever. We were supposed to champion freedom and rights of people along with economic development.
Instead, what do we do, go and build up the very still Communist regime of Red China, with a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" of turning a blind eye as the money came rolling in. These aren't goods we've gotten on the cheap, these are goods created by slave labor. Ask the Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang how their "rights" are being respected. That we now have a powerful and politically adversarial competitor, rather than a free ally to contend with is really no fault but our own. But then, maybe it's just as simple as economic forces wanting to promote continual conflict whilst they take the money all the way to the bank.
1
China is succeeding in large part by developing a growing middle class. For the last 40 years the US under Both Democrats and Republicans, including Trump, have decimated the middle class and presided over the greatest transfer of wealth and income from the middle class to the 1% (and some to the 10%) in history. While we built fighter planes and warships, China built infrastructure and our infrastructure crumbled. While we fought stupid, counterproductive wars based on neocon lies , China quietly made strategic domestic investments around the world. While we allowed our corporations and banks to run amok in the name of profits and political corruption, China carefully regulated their increasingly capitalistic system, And now we have Trump making it worse.
6
Can anyone tell me, if President Trump has ever been to mainland China?
1
Why does China have to steal U.S. technology? Because authoritarian regimes are lousy at innovating. When was the last time anyone bought a TV from Russia? A microwave from Zimbabwe?
To this end we have already won the trade war, long term, with China.
If freedom and democracy confer upon us a natural advantage, then that’s one more reason why we in the U.S. should continue to hold those beliefs dear, as did the men and women buried at Arlington.
2
" Respect for the rule of Law " is one point between China and Trump. Neither respect the Rule of Law. Each knows the other to be thief and liar.
4
The unmentioned part
in all the comments is how AMERICAN businesses were complicit in allowing this, preferring not to manufacture here in the US. China isn’t at fault as much as our own people.
Rich people excel at deflection and obfuscation.
3
There is another dimension to this story: while China was selling its cheap toys and shirts, it was buying the US debt, which tamed inflation in this country. I think it gave some pause to the former US administrations that some folks on this page are now eager to blame. Whether China may decide to unload the US debt as a leverage for negotiations is open to debate, but it won't be pretty.
1
Sorry Thomas, you were as wrong about globalization being a great thing( your book “The World is Flat”), falsely claiming it would lift all boats, as you were on your position favoring the invasion of Iraq.
2
Sorry, Tom. We need China a lot more than China needs us. And Trump is still a clueless, blustering buffoon.
5
@Bob With all due respect Bob I fail to see how we need China, if you’re referring to them buying our T bills and the fear of them dumping them there are two things that refute that as being a negative, quite the reverse in my opinion. First they would be shooting themselves in the foot as the prices would fall, they would lose big bucks, conversely if they weren’t buyers interest rates would normalize and Americans, in particular small American savers would benefit from higher rates and not be forced into yet another risky bubble whether overpriced stocks that have risen largely due to cheap money, tax breaks and buybacks nor into an overheated real estate market whereby everyone wants to be a landlord or hotelier thanks to Airbnb, not only mom and pop investors who will get burned, but in particular hedge funds and their ilk that have entered and exited the market benefiting from both the bubbles they create and the subsequent crash they engineer. With our trade deficit at such crazy levels and the certainty that China will dump their American partners as soon as its to their advantage, I fail to see how we need China, the idea that we will benefit from all those billions of potential consumers was a big lie to justify selling out American labor. This is happening as we speak in everything from smart phones to coffee shops to web sites peddling goods that the Chinese are floating on their markets as well as ours. They are taking over the world without a shot being fired.
@ Ron, our checks and balances are proving worthless.
1
LBJ's military intervention in Vietnam was North Vietnam's worst nightmare, but then the Hanoi politburo members just made up their minds to stick it out, and they eventually won.
5
In the end the question may become which consumer can withstand the greater deprivation, American or Chinese. I think I know the answer.
3
I utterly abhor Trump but love the hard line he takes toward China. I just wish we could have his China policy without all the other personality-disorder garbage he brings.
3
For decades, America and Europe tolerated a certain amount of cheating from China on trade, because they could exploit China's cheap labor and assumed that as China became more prosperous they could exploit it's consumer market. Didn't quite work out as planned though.
It is interesting that politicians and the public from across the political spectrum seem to generally agree with Trump's China policy. It's time to take a stand while we still (sort of) can do so.
But, I disagree with Friedman that the goal is to to establish a "win win"; that ship sailed when Xi decided to become a modern-day emperor. He oversees a 100% authoritarian regime that has put millions of its own people into concentration camps, effectively censors speech (including in Hollywood movies and in Australian newspapers) and is happily exporting repressive technologies to multiple countries.
When you cut through the bombast, Trump's goal is to make the best of a bad situation. Without a course correction, the US and the rest of the western world would surely end up in a weaker position. And history shows that authoritarians love to exploit weakness.
On the path we are on now, we will be a bit poorer over the economically in the future. So be it. Sneakers will cost a bit more, and so will your electronics. But lost freedom is a higher cost.
What we needed was the TPP. But Trump gutted that. So here we are, with this idiot, in way over his head, banging his fist on the table. How does that help anything?
Regarding U.S. businesses, China's rise was simply a rich-get-richer; poor get poorer situation. Manufacturers shuttered U.S. factories and reopened them where labor costs and environmental constraints were less. Corporate profits increased with benefits going mostly to upper income households. Retrenchment from China may simply mean in actuality that financial incentives have diminished. It may have little to do with national security or fairness. Trade with China never made sense to the average American worker who has become relegated to minimum wage jobs that had been done by teenagers seeking short term work.
1
Tom, most unfortunate to write about these things as humans are going extinct in the near term - do you not know this?
Donald Trump = What America Needs
2
Quietly???? Wishful thinking, Mr. Friedman.
China may deserve Donald Trump but America certainly doesn’t, especially after 2 1/2 years of his lying and circumventing the rule of law to sit on his imaginary throne . We don’t need somebody to break the back of our democracy , let alone by a failed real estate developer who contributes nothing but imbecilic hot air to ur American climate .
Well Donald Trump calls all of his enemies “losers“ we will see who the biggest loser is in November 2020 ....
3
“Moreover, in a dual-use world, you have to worry that if you have a Huawei chatbot in your home, an equivalent of Amazon’s Echo, you could also be talking to Chinese military intelligence”
Hello ... How sad is it to live in a totalitarian state where only your censors are taught your history?
“I’ll have to get back to you on that”
1
This problem isn’t just about Chinese producers feeding America’s insatiable lust for cheap and bountiful goods, as many would suggest. It was fueled decades ago by American corporate greed in pursuit of cheap offshore labor to yield improved earnings and fatter paychecks for management. And it’s worked.
Nobody cared if it meant risking Chinese access to American intellectual property. But now they’re shocked that Chinese are using that acquired knowledge to clone products ranging from Gibson guitars and computers to designer clothing.
And there’s every likelihood the Chinese might realize their goal of world leadership in AI, robotics, computers and other technologies, thanks largely to productive business alliances cultivated by us.
Then too, their government isn’t mired down in daily scandals from an incompetent and corrupt leadership. They have ways of solving those kinds of problems.
2
Does the Constitution give the President the power to impose tariffs? Article I Section 8
1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
"Duties" are tariffs. What says the Supreme Court?
4
Kudos to the author in recognizing the astuteness of the POTUS' timing. At the same time Friedman suggests negotiating tactics. Wow, a journalist who may have never negotiated anything larger than his own house is telling a billionaire with a bestselling book on the art of negotiation how terribly wrong the POTUS is proceeding. In a real sense the POTUS even negotiated himself into the Presidency in a close race. That's chutzpah Mr. Friedman. I was a professional negotiator for 28 years and I am blown away by the negotiating talent of the man we did vote into office.
2
Underestimating the resolve of the Chinese to retaliate in this trade war will be disastrous. While this article alluded to the long overdue rebalancing of preferential trade conditions for China through WTO membership as a “developing” nation, China taking the long view is still counting their trade deficit inflicted by the looting West in the Opium Wars, and they are not quite yet done putting this imbalance right.
2
Mr. Friedman states, correctly, that trade is not like war, as you can have win-win outcomes. Unfortunately Donald Trump cannot take yes for an answer, in such situations.
Unfortunately this is not merely overlooked by our "stable genius", but is entirely antithetical to his entire personality. It is not important only for him to win. To the contrary. To feed his insatiable ego, it is absolutely vital for him to have the other party LOSE. He MUST be seen as the victor, and for that to occur, in his limited perception, his opposite absolutely HAS to lose.
2
Donald Trump is doing exactly what the President of the United States is suppose to do. He is protecting the United States from a foreign power which means us harm.
1
Fantastic op-ed by Mr. Friedman, as usual. The trade and political relationship with China are of great importance to our national security and economic well being going forward. It’s undeniable that Donald Trump is the first modern president who has actually started pushing back against the increasingly aggressive Chinese government led by its self appointed life time ruler Xi Jinping. Democratic candidates for the presidency, especially Joe Biden (my choice for President) need to clearly come out and state that they will continue with a very robust response to Chinese economic and geopolitical aggression.
1
@Robert: I'll believe the US has become serious about competing in a global marketplace when it officially converts to the Metric System of measurements in use everywhere else in the world.
5
An observant Chinese friend opined that in China the government told the corporations what to do and in the United States the corporations told the government what to do. Should make for interesting negotiations going forward.
1
@ken Jay: The US capitalistic interlocked directorship is a system of collusion much like the CCP.
Challenging China was such a huge and difficult task and doing it requires an enormous courage. Over the years China government proved over and over again that they can not be trusted. They maneuvered our western world to buy themselves time, making promises that were not kept, etc. The fact that China eliminated the presidential term limits was a climax, a wake up call surprisingly weekly received in Europe or in the US. There is still nostalgia here and in Europe to see China as our partner and a friend. Instead there should be some soul searching on our part and the question should be asked who is responsible for allowing China to grow by accepting their unfair practices, steeling intellectual property, military designs, etc. There were so many interest groups in the US and Europe that were interested in maintaining the status quo, lobbing politicians who depended on their donations. These politicians who created themselves a wishful reality of fiction in which things worked well together and we needed China as a friend. For example because of the climate change we need solar panels and only China could deliver them at a low cost. Nobody wanted to acknowledge that the US would become dependent on Chinese solar panels as we became dependent on Chinese rare metals necessary to build the computers and electronics. Many are anxious to blame President Trump for initiating the trade war. Shouldn’t he be given some credit for his attempt to change the dangerous status quo?
4
No, his methods are crude and pointless. Plus no one should trust him. He is a proven liar.
2
When the U.S. faces a perceived challenge in trade, there is no lack of reasons for applying pressure on its adversaries. In the 1980's, it was Japan and now it's China. But, unlike Japan, China wouldn't be sassily contained. In my opinion, as long as the U.S. insists on keeping its dominant positions in all important areas of technology, there wouldn't be a win-win trade agreement. Such agreement can't be produced under maximum pressure and unilateral determination of what is "fair".
2
1. Thomas Friedman talks as if we need to approve China to join the WTO , which we did, in order for them to trade with other nations. That is absurd. Trade is as ancient as the human civilization itself. Now we are saying China can do their trade because of our benevolence. What a great point.
2. Speaking of intellectual property right. We stole the cotton technology straight from the British in 1820s( or earlier) despite their ban, and created our own cotton mills in Boston. Is that an intellectual property theft? Yes. Does it justify the Chinese behavior in any form? No. But as least for me it is hypocritical to consistently slash the Chinese in the names of 'IP theft'. The reason I am saying this, is because under the WTO rule( our making), the developing nations can do the 'copy and paste' things as we did before. Otherwise the more advanced American companies will flood out all their native industries. The pharmaceutical industries in India, for example, is literally just doing that with little modification. That is the reality we have to face in a world where we are not at the center of the Earth.
3. Of course Huawei is a company that has the potential to engage in espionage activities. However, our companies have been constantly engaged in espionage since at least the establishment of NSA. it went so bad and became a global scandal. There is no moral high ground here, at least for our Americans.
6
That's probably all true, but the key difference in the analysis is that the United States is an open democracy with checks and balances to curb the misuse of technology. in China its one party rule.
4
Complaints about the “stealing” of R&D are very misplaced. From WWII until about the 70’s all large corporations from Ciba-Geigy and AT&T to RCA, Xerox, and GE maintained huge R&D Labs to generate new tech. But today they are ghosts of the past. Why??
Because the American corporate culture could not find a way to implement their discoveries in profitable products: the great ideas were pooh-poohed in the boardroom and imaginative start-ups took the ideas and made billions.
The decision to abandon high tech and focus upon lobbying and cheap foreign labor to make money is the cause of technology transfer. Not so much “stealing” as failure to understand the value of ideas and how know-how spreads.
10
This is the best article I have read on the subject.
Thanks You! I especially like how you cover both sides.
1
China was really great when labor was cheap and China did not compete with American corporations and the profits were just great. How things change.
They dare to compete, doing what all corporations do, making money. That must stop, same goes for the EU, they are getting out of hand and need to get cut down. To sanction individual companies should work too.
If need be the US can bomb the life out of them and level Europe as was done to the ME, nothing but ruins left.
4
Good points.
I'm still frustrated that the US government wants me to buy an apple phone while Huawei phones are superior devices and far cheaper.
I'm frustrated that American tech companies continue to surveil me and invade my privacy as the de facto payment for the use of necessary technology.
I'm frustrated that massive tech and retail companies like Amazon pay little or no taxes and then use expansion and new jobs as leverage to further avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
I'm frustrated that our president has a state media outlet because Faux News is yet another corporate power married to state power. I'm frustrated that any trade negotiations will be set by those same government/corporate powers that continue to nickle and dime American consumers to death, pay their workers slave wages, and are trying to accelerate ecocide in the face of guaranteed extinction for thousands, if not millions of species.
I agree that liberal democracy is superior to Chinese authoritarianism. So, how about we fix our own system before dictating how other nations should behave?
I think Freidman would be very onboard with that.
8
Catastrophic change is not good governing policy. Full stop.
Trump has a long, documented history of blowing stuff up and leaving it to others to clean up the mess. I'm not giving him any cred until we see where this is going.
I say that as someone who was willing to admit that as corrupt as Richard Nixon was, he got his China policy right. That didn't make him a good president.
4
Expecting that Trump will manage to get a win-win deal with China is delusional. He has shown time and time again that he is a terrible negotiator, all we can expect is escalating tensions unless the Chinese learn how to con a con man. In which case the losers will still be us.
6
Criticizing Chinese subsidizing of major industries is hypocritical. The USA has been doing that in spades. Agriculture in particular has massive federal programs from crop subsidies to insurance to payments for not planting farm land. US business tax breaks (tax expenditures) are massive and growing. Look at the billion dollar tax expenditure deals for Amazon, Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, the Musk battery factory and Microsoft. The computer was developed with government funding as well as the internet. Europe does the same to a relative extent even greater than the USA.
5
It helps that Trump comes the Business world, where only those who are the most ruthless and cunning climb to the top. He has seen many people line XI, those who smile to your face, and buy you a drink, all the while they are trying to steal everything you worked hard for. Trump may not be the President America deserves, but he might be the very president we need at this precise time.
1
@Lonnie
Right. Because a self serving and dishonest business man makes a good leader.
Except it doesn't.
This all started with the Walton family in Arkansas and it's mass imports of cheap Chinese-made products, which grew it to a mega-retailer and now the United States largest employer. This is ground zero for "rolling-back" prices and our addiction to cheap consumer goods. It's now spawned the current trade war with China. The horse was out of the barn in 1996 and its on the Silk Road in China now. Trump will do what he can and this is where Biden needs to wake up and get a clue.
1
Someone at the NYTimes finally gets what Trump's "America First" really means, and where it really matters. There's always the obligatory "Trump's tweets, tho, are so infantile heh heh" quip, but Trump's twitter feed seems trivial, does it not, against what Trump obviously gets about China as an adversary of the US, on many fronts.
Trump gets it. Obviously, his campaign rhetoric wasn't just a collection of throw away rants.
The tide is turning, albeit slowly, regarding Trump. Media snark targeting Trump doesn't play so well; in fact it's falling flat. Trump's "clarity" about China, trade, NATO, immigration - all recognize that yesterday's complacency has real world consequences for the future of the US. It's hard at this point to imagine anyone else keeping these issues front and center without caving.
I prefer Trump's rough and tumble to dusty platitudes.
2
Thanks for the reminder about how delusional the trump base is, lest we forget.
1
You give Trump way too much credit. Trump was only interested in the imbalance of money going to China exceeding money coming in from China.
2
As the saying goes, "even a stopped clock is right twice a day".
The fundamental flaw in most Western analysts view of China is that they constantly point out that China repeatedly violates the rules based international order set up by the West after WW2; but fail to explain is that the West repeatedly violates its own rules when they become inconvenient.
They point out China's behavior in Xinjiang, but ignore our behavior in Iraq. They point out Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, but ignore our invasion of Afghanistan. They point out China's support for North Korea's nuclear program, but refuse to point out that when Libya made a denuclearize-for-peace deal with the West, we bombed them anyway.
When we've repeatedly violated our own rules, how can we reasonably expect anyone else to abide by them?
We should not go back to a dog-eat-dog world. But we absolutely should start living up to our own standards before demanding that others do the same.
2
Is this the same Thomas Friedman who gave us his learned opinion that if DJT was elected as POTUS, “the DOW was going to crater”and the USA would “plunge into a protracted deep recession”? Oh yea, that’s he same guy. And you on the Left listen to him yet again.
As Mrs Pelosi just said, “We must follow the facts”. Maybe my friends on the Left should heed her words!
1
Oh, Gee........Let me think. Tom is suggesting that China is the one taking apart "globalization" Gosh, the timing is really, really coincidental, coming at a time that our madman President is ripping established relationships across the world, apart !
Hear we go again. Some of our best thinkers,(like Tom Friedman) are re-inventing anti-Chinese thought, and joining Trump's brand of sour grapes. China's successful socialism (yea, communism) appears to be nudging the U.S. out of first place. You people should relax, and accept the changing order. Great Britain was faced with this same kind of historical change, and survived! The wheel of history grinds forward..........
2
The only thing Trump is interested in when it comes to China is more Trump trademarks and getting away with an even wider berth at having slaves in a sweatshop there.
2
Tump has destroyed nearly everything he's touched and everyone around him since adolescence. It's who he is. It drove his parent's crazy.
If anyone thinks he's a changed man, they are sadly mistaken.
You can safely bet that his trade war will be a huge failure regardless of what you see, read or hear in the media.
It's who and what he is. If you want to know why, ask a reputable child psychiatrist.
2
Can I ask a question after reading the new 25% tariff goods on our Chinese imports?
Why is the list heavily skewed toward low value added items and not high valued items like complete items (except for the automobile and other specialty industries who helped write this)?
We are taxing (placing tariffon ) raw materials...absurd!!!!!!
Would that China were the world’s bugbear of bugbears! But it ain’t! Would that the human wrecking ball discriminated! But he don’t! Would that the wrecking of China were a sufficient consolation prize for the wrecking of the planet! But...!
You get the point!!
1
The Chinese do not wish Trump to anyone, not even to its worst enemies. Pls keep him to yourself.
1
I had great faith in China until Xi Jinping became President. I had great faith in America until Donald Trump became President. The two of them desrve each other. Can't we just lock them in a room somwhere?
1
Both Trump and Xi are megalomaniacs. Heaven help us.
1
Tom, you are such a "centrist"!
DJT deserves an impeachment.
Excellent summary and analysis Mr. Friedman.
Here we go again!
There is another neck-breaking “salto mortale”, instantly changing from the world being a flat place into China deserving Donald Trump...
Is this the global warming or the global freezing?!
What about us, do we deserve him?
For God’ sake, we elected Trump!
1
Fascinating to read some comments. People declaring Trumps victory, before we, rather Trump's team, even rounds the first turn and reaches the back stretch.
Stop it! Just being tough isnt enough. Especially since the toughness is chest-thumping, and is not backed with any real strategy.
Sure we needed to be tougher on China, but yelling out the window (Trumps tweets) at them isn't a strategy. Imagine you're the former All-that, Bigly kid on the street, now negotiating terms with the new bigger kid, the one throwing his weight and punches around and taking control. And while you're reaching some terms...your mom sticks her head out the window and yells some stuff that makes you look weak.
"Hey sonny, that's my boy...he's real tough...you better watch out, he'll beat you up!"
The real tragedy with the Trump Admin is their complete lack of strategy beyond Trumps chest-thumping. They have no idea whereto go with Iran. The whole plan was dump the treaty, then make a lot of noise about Iran's sins. Meanwhile we're the ones chickening out and running away, instead of staying in, using the"open-door" and doing some real negotiating.
With China, whats the follow-thru strategy? China's not going to trim down, from their "heavily muscled-up" body and let us maybe catch-up!
We're not seeing the bigger picture from the Trump WH. We're not seeing how they're planning to run the whole race, only how they - Trump - wants to come out of the gate. All pomp and little circumstance.
2
Thanks for pointing out the obvious.
Each country has the government it deserves, said the old adage. Where is FDR when we need him?
1
I applaud Friedman for this article. The World is a lot smaller than most people think and, from a Global Economy perspective, it's getting smaller every year. The United States has about 330 million people and China has almost 1.4 billion, and these two economies are the main drivers of Global business.
This is the time to make a "comprehensive agreement" that would be good nor only for both countries, but the World! Having said that, I'm not convinced that the Trump Administration is up to the task! Oh, I'm sure they can go around the edges and negotiate tariffs... but what about the most critical item to be confronted: The state of the Oceans, global pollution, the air that we all breathe, and Climate Change. The USA and China could set the "Global Standards" for the World... but are they up to the REAL challenge?
China has been down this road once before with a world power. Britian wanted their tea but China wanted nothing but sterling silver in return which was steadily draining their treasury. The Brits solved this problem with opium and we know how that turned out.
2
I do not agree with Trump on China. He doesn't know the past and lacks the breadth of vision to deal with the future. But I agree with Friedman. This is an excellent analysis of where we are and how we got here. Since it is unlikely Trump will deal with the situation effectively, it also points to what will be left for his successor.
I am not at all convinced that China will be swayed by the tariffs, simply by the fact that they are authoritarian, and are thus unswayed by working class woes. Secondly, this very much reminds me of Japan in the 80's. One of the ways we trumped (no pun intended) them was by government investment in micochip and computer research consortiums. We could now use some federal investment in 5G to keep ahead of the game. Thirdly, China has a huge disadvantage as far as research level engineers and scientists, so the next big thing is coming from the US or Western Europe, and the Chinese, reverse engineer as they like, are not only years away on this, they are an entire regime-change-social-revolution away from it.
1
As economic competition expands to advanced technology,
"values matter, differences in values matters, a modicum of trust matters and the rule of law matters."
In a global contest that extends from trade to encompass the gap between Chinese and Western values, Trump is a poor advocate for the American perspective as he undermines our values and the rule of law at home.
3
Trump is an idiot, and a despicable person, to boot, and that so many millions of people actually like and support him shows us just how far America has fallen.
7
The only benefit I can see to POTUS’s bumbling policy is the start of a re-establishment of ground rules with the Chinese under a much smarter US president in 2020.
China absolutely cannot be allowed to dominate 5G in Europe and elsewhere, especially by gaming the system with subsidies from Beijing. In the long run this would undermine democratic republics as much or more than Russian intelligence operations do.
The Russians lack the resources for the greater global tech war that China possesses. As full autocracies it is imperative that future American leadership keep Beijing in check. The US is political turmoil at the moment, but I’ve faith we will return to core values once our little “experiment” with fascism is fully discredited.
2020 will be the beginning of an American revival in moral leadership.
1
@Rob
Or we will simply elect another corporate stooge.
This should be required reading. Excellent desription of current events. Thank you.
5
So long as China is a single-party authoritarian republic, it is not going to change its governmental outlook and approach to trade with the outside world. To do so would threaten the ruling party's hegemony over the country, something that can't be tolerated. This doesn't mean that the U.S. and its other trading partners can't do business with China, but to expect an equal relationship with some give and take isn't realistic. So, we have the President's trade war. The really sad thing is to see so much of the mainstream press bending over backwards to point out its possible negative effects, without reminding us of the context that made this necessary.
I think one of the biggest errors America made is believing that our representative government (which seems to be dysfunctional at this time) guaranteed technological success over China's authoritarian system. I must admit, I bought into that as well.
That said, China has 3-4x the US population. Let's assume that the US capitalistic system does not, in fact, guarantee industrial superiority. Let us also assume that Chinese business owners and labor are not inferior to our own. China should be making 3-4x the number of products and providing 3-4x the numbers of services as American counterparts.
That said, we certainly shouldn't let them run us over. As strangely as our current government is behaving, I still think I'd prefer not to be Chinese. Or maybe this attitude is mistaken. . . .
Commenters who praise trump are missing one important point: Trump has yet to win any time he tries to dabble in international politics. The only person who truly considers Trump a business man par excellence is Trump. Picking fights with our allies gains no advantage, just as taunting name-calling North Korea like some playground juvenile wins no support from any country.
1
Iran's shenanigan's in the ME are mere pinpricks to the incomparable danger China poses to the US.China has stolen all our military secrets, duplicated our weapons system, conducting hacking attacks, flooded the US with their cheap products, built military bases in the China sea, challenging the US navy, trying to force us out of the Pacific, have threatened Taiwan wit occupation by force...and starting a confrontation with the US.
And we are trying to destroy' little' Iran...
1
Though Thom touches on it lightly, the core problem here is a conflict in economic systems and the values upon which they are based. China believes in state control of capital and ownership (thus the large state-owned companies and fuzzy ownership of Huawei) much more than the U.S. (we do it via the Defense Department and tax breaks). China also supports markets where on large company dominates and kills off all others (and then than one company cow-tows to the Party). We will allow some oligopoly in the name of innovation and price competition. China also believes in effective dictatorship, we at this point still have the remnants of a democracy (though campaign finance laws keep a narrow elite in power behind the scenes).
So neither system is perfect and has flaws (which neither party will admit). The kind of change that is needed on both sides cannot be accomplished through a trade agreement. Deep changes in domestic policies in both countries are needed and will take a long time. Neither party can force the other to make those changes quickly. So we are stuck in a complex messy problem in which we expect a simpleton like Trump to solve. Yes Trump has stepped into the right problem, but he has no real idea or deep strategic thinking to solve it. We can only hope for a lucky accident here.
1
Unless an until Trump speaks out about slave labor and concentration camps in China and North Korea, I will reserve any applause. China has been a GOP dream of cheap labor, no worker restrictions for fair labor practices; little regulatory obstacles and a way to destroy US unions. Now we will see if GOP is the party of greedy capitalism or the party of US fair labor competition. All the underemployed in Central America could be employed in Mexico and US as guest workers in light industry, textiles and digital manufacturing while China buys soybeans elsewhere and torments its minorities. Waiting to hear from Biden and Dems who have fostered open trade with China for last forty years.
4
The key difference is that China is educating its people while we are intentionally stupefy them with the endless amounts of the brainwashing commercials.
That’s why we have the rampant epidemics of obesity, alcoholism, smoking, vaping, drug addiction, pharmaceutical drug consumption, obsessive video gaming, body piercing, tattooing, compulsive consumer spending, celebrity cults and following, et cetera...
Basically, we have to get stuck with the enormous social problems first to start thinking if a certain type of behavior is harmful or not.
In contrast, China is acting preemptively and preventively.
Is that antidemocratic behavior or very reasonable and intelligent policy?!
Since we waste the colossal amounts of money on the harmful practices, we need the government to provide us with the free health care and college education while simultaneously refusing to increase the taxes to pay for it...
1
You’re right that China is educating it’s people. Just ask the Uighurs. They get free room and board as well. The whole country is rapidly becoming the most surveilled, controlled place on earth. They offer very little to emulate.
Mostly true but don’t kid yourself. Many of the ills you mention are rampant in China too.
@Zamboanga,
just tell that to the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Syrians, the Libyans, the Saudis, the Egyptians...
They have no problems at all with the Chinese government although all of them are the Muslims...
The worst lie is not that China pays the tariffs, that are actually paid by American consumers. The even worse lie, that is being accepted by many in the media, is that the pain to American consumers and farmers is worth it because in the long-run we will be eventually better off because of the tariffs now. The exact opposite is the case. Tariffs make the country that imposes them poorer as their protected businesses become less efficient and noncompetitive.
The biggest falsehood promulgated by Trump and many of the (mostly Democrat party) politicians who opposed NAFTA and other trade agreements is that America has entered into terrible trade deals. This is particularly dangerous, because so many people who are now vehemently opposed to Trump appear to have bought into it. The exact opposite is the truth. The USA may not be number one in everything, but we are definitely number one in negotiators and lawyers.
If two foreign countries, say Brazil and Argentina were in a trade related dispute, both sides will usually hire American negotiators and lawyers. One tactic the USA has used to get the upper hand in trade negotiations was to use American women to do the face-to-face negotiation. Many foreign cultures were unused to dealing with women at that level. This gave the USA an additional advantage when negotiating the trade deals, that made America the worlds' largest and strongest economy...."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205253
1
China must be seen as a hostile foreign power, they are as great a threat to US interests as the Soviet Union ever was. All trade with China should be criminalized and seen as aiding and abetting the crimes of a totalitarian regime. We are wasting our effort posturing over Iran, the enemy is China. It has always been China.
I just had a discussion this morning where I pointed out that it is foolish to forget that the government controls the game and can kick over the table at any time. They don't usually do it, but, as Standard Oil found out, they can change the rules which changes the game (something that Facebook, etc. should also remember). Why am I bring this up? Because the same game change can happen anyplace/anytime. Our soybean farmers are finding out the China can just move to a new suppler. China is going to find out what happens when 'Anyone but China" becomes the way of doing business. Each government can make laws that will make it very, very hard to return to how things were once done. People always forget that things can always change.
1
Do you know which country pretty much controls the world supply of rare-earth elements? Hint -- it's not the United States.
1
Many of Obama's foreign policies seem to have failed due to his inherent nature to trust people and his core belief that such people work for a better society and a better world even though their ways to get it might be different.
Trump seems to be just the polar opposite. And that mentality is better suited when dealing with many people around the world, who are habitual liars, autocratic and have no obligation to maintain a good public relation to win elections.
2
USA could make political fortune by co-opting other Far East countries with gripes against China's bullying actions - creating artificial island etc. in the South China Sea.
1
Poorer, or just not becoming wealthier as fast, Tom?
Keeping in mind how many millions of Americans have become poorer over the last 20 years as a result of globalization, why is more globalization even desirable, Tom?
Let alone the threat China’s leadership poses to civil liberties outside of China.
In case you forgot: the top four economic powers are: USA, China, Japan and Germany.
It’s like they say on Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the others!
The Chinese civilization is 5000 years old. It has never been and it will never be like ours. Let's not even try.
We do not need them to be like us in order to solve our common challenges on global warming, cyber security, space exploration, and scientific research. Working together is much better than fighting each other. Seeking to dominate is a sign of weakness.
For a globalist like Tom, I am disappointed in his change of heart on China. His current view that China does not share the same western 'values' as the primary reason for the need to keep the Chinese down before they 'supercede' us. He sounded more like Steve Bannon, the avowed white nationalist. Let's not get there please.
1
China is bad with all its problems. US is the shining city on the hill. The Chinese don’t want to change a thing in your country but can you do the same to China? The Chinese did not elect Xi Jinping but most of the Chinese are happy with him. Trump is elected by the Americans but why can’t you be happy with him? No, the Chinese would rather that the Americans keep trump to the Americans and thank you vet much if you could just do that.
You should know that China will not bend. America must reclaim vital manufacturing, at whatever cost. In the end, we should plan for military action to retain the Pacific or we will start to go down the sinkhole of history. That has already started and must be reversed, with Trump at the helm.
It's not all bad Trump has embraced importaton of medications from Canada. What's Hillary's I mean Biden's position on that? Bad for those with shares in Pharma? Never mind,I already have my answer.
GDP per capita, 2017 US$ (World Bank data): USA: 59,928 / China: 8,827 (World: 10,749)
China's people are getting too rich. We cannot allow that, or only if they do it our way.
Make Imperialism Great Again
We need to put China in its place? We need to force them to play fair? I guess that is because we (aka the USA) have been so fair in our international and economic policies. We use our powerful economy to force poorer nations to bend to our will. But typically only if they have something we want. The citizens of those countries are the ones that suffer, not the politicians/leaders. And then our government uses the fear factors of a 9/11 repeat and socialism to convince our less than open minded citizens to back the wars we threaten and perpetrate if that poor country does not "bend the knee".
Wishing/hoping that Trump will moderate his typical behavior is a waste of time. Because he hasn't yet, and undoubtedly, won't change. He's a temper tantrum personified.
As you wish, Xi may go his own "the Long March". A lose-lose result.
Two authoritarian leaders. Both play zero-sum games. Another day of watching the world fragment into winners and losers, haves and have-nots. It is getting worse, not better. Sorry, Tom, can't be optimistic here.
US should thank China for getting Donald Trump? All the jobs that were done by hometown folks disappeared to China, and the liberal company folks and Wall Street got stinking rich. The revenge was taken through the ballot box by voting in Trump. Maybe Trump knows that and he is delivering a trade war?
There is no mention of Joe Biden, who recently said China is not even a competitor! I can’t believe he could make such an ignorant assertion! And he’s the Democrat front-runner! I’m a Democrat, by the way.
1
This continuing attempt to normalize Trump and expect that he can plan and execute anything is getting nauseating. Trump knows how to destroy. He has no idea how to fix anything. Its a new day, who are the farmers going to sell their soybeans to now that the Chinese have new markets.
2
We deserve Trump- he is a reflection of the public's need for change and their insight that he is a wrecking ball, needed to right things that have gone too left, too narcissistic, and somewhat untethered in our society. Common principles are at odds, never mind how to aspire to achieve those principles.
We go through cycles in this country, this is a necessary one, although dangerous one.
Hopefully he is leading with bluster, and behind the scenes real analysis and measured approaches are winning the day
It's now abundantly clear that Chinese leaders never intended to play fair and will never stop cheating and stealing. For them, we're a bunch of suckers to be exploited. They mistake goodwill for weakness.
That's why it's better to stop deluding ourselves and diversify our trade partners before it's too late.
Countries like Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and others would benefit enormously and we won't subsidize the Chinese imperialist dreams.
It's time for Democrats to start speaking out on this issue. If they don't, Trump will win in 2020.
4
Has The WTO stood by while China stole industrial secrets. Why wasn’t this disputed when it started, which I assume was years ago.
I also doubt Trump would have started this if he didn’t have America’s farmers to kick around. And he’s trying to pay them off with American tax receipts to shut up, including all the tariffs Americans will pay for Chinese goods.
2
As much as I hate the Trump Presidency, he is right on this issue. Aggressive action should have been initiated 20 years ago. But the US sold it's soul to China. Maybe the NY Times should do a story about who benefited from our weak policy decisions regarding China. I believe you can start with Walmart in the in the 1990's and work your way down from there. I just wonder if the Democrats take back the White House, which I hope they do, will they embrace the same tough stance against China. This is a real line in the sand, that we must defend. Otherwise, a repressive, Communist giant will overwhelm us in the very near future.
Trumps’s “base”:
The 20 percent who are anti-abortion.
And additional 10 percent who like guns but hate abortion.
An additional 30 percent who agree with Trump about China more so than their differences about guns or abortion
An additional 10 percent who don’t care about any of the above as long as the stock market keeps going up.
Total=70 percent.
The “wall” isn’t playing very well any more. Did you know more Americans are moving to Mexico now than the other way around? And no one has the stomach for watching Guatemalan children die on the border from infection and dehydration // preventable illness.
Personally I did not think the TPP was "doing nothing". It was a multilateral effort which means it did not involve a lot of yelling and purely bilateral action. We seem to admire "scream a lot and accomplish little" these days vs. any actual achievement. More fool us.
1
An old economics teachers, from the 80's, liked to use a see-saw analogy when discussing trade imbalances.
Two kids on a see-saw, one is much heavier then the other (a fat and a skinny kid) and therefore controls the up and down motion. The skinny kid starts whining that he wants to be in more control. The fat kid laughs him off. The skinny kid keeps whining, then along comes his mom, who demands the fat kid lets her son control the planks up and down. Again, the fat kid laughs them off, pushes off and nearly throws the skinny kid off the other end. The kid screams, mom yells louder.
At that time the fat kids mom comes along, takes a look at whats going on...then says to the other mom; "Maybe you should feed that scrawny kid, put some honest weight on him, so he can give my kid a better ride! Your kid gets to just sit there and get a free-ride."
Since Eco-102 was an early class, and I was working two jobs to put myself thru school, we'd would stare and yawn. Not till years later did I digest the (silly) analogy.
The skinny kid needs to put on some real weight of his own, he cant just whine and expect to have the power to push the fatter kid. The fatter kid ain't gonna simply lose weight to hand over control.
The US is now at a manufacturing, R&D, disadvantage, we're too skinny. We're not trying hard enough to compete. The White House and Congress should be more worried about "bulking up" US industry with honest weight, then trying to force China to lose its weight.
The only nation that deserves Donald Trump is the one that elected him.
2
excellent article : thank you !
Friedman’s caveat “if Trump could stop his juvenile Twittering” ....is a crucial point. Trump cannot.
I have lived and worked and negotiated contracts in China. It is never a fair deal. I have studied their history and have a Ph.D. In Chinese studies and speak and read Mandarin. Lies and deceptions are considered fair play by the Chinese. For an astute, brilliant and brutal assessment of how we came to this point and were completely duped, please read “The Hundred Year Marathon” by Michael Pillsbury.
I find Trump personally repugnant and he is fundamentally self-serving and corrupt.
But the idea of resetting the US' relationship with China does resonate with me.
I worked for a small company that did some business in China in the late 80's and early 90's. In those days one was working with companies that were really renamed ministries or departments of the Chinese government.
Our Chinese counterparts had no idea of a "win win" negotiation. They signed agreements and then violated them with impunity... What were we going to do... Sue them... In China?
I am a bit puzzled as to who is really behind Trump's trade confrontation with China. Trump himself is profoundly ignorant and most of his personal experience is with corrupt real estate deals with ex-Soviet apparatchiks. Who is whispering in his ear on the China trade stuff?
2
Thank you, Mr. Friedman, for stating the obvious about the cheating, stealing ways of China.
Whatever. Trump will, as usual, make the worst deal for everyone but himself, personally. He will alienate allies and weaponize trade. It will be ugly.
Sad that you can't give Trump credit when it is deserved. Not only will we achieve some protections for intellectual rights we will see diversification of our trading partners. This will be great for the emerging markets! Sad that Obama in his 8 years did nothing to reduce our dependence on China or to protect our intellectual capital... NYT needs to stop criticizing Trump when he does something that is actually good for the country.. Hammer him when he deserves it and praise him too, NYT needs to return to even-handed coverage.
I wonder if the sad reality is that it takes a scammer and a cheat to beat a scammer and a cheat.
Trump might actually be the right guy to beat China on trade because his whole business career has been based on the same kinds of shady practices China has been pursuing against the US.
Past presidents may have been good at general diplomacy, but lacked the hornswaggling necessary to go after China. I'd also argue that they were too easy swayed by business leaders and economists who felt that the larger relationship was still a win for the US economy.
This doesn't mean that Trump's mendacity is good in most other (or any other) sphere, but with China it might just take a thief and a liar to best a thief and a liar.
1
Too much credit is given to Trump "instincts".
Poppycock I say. He just found another populist cause to throw a tweet at for personal gain, like a good demagogue.
It just happens to be one that a lot of us agree with. But it has to be managed professionally by adults. Not by the narcissistic buffoon in the White House and his merry band of sycophants.
1
Trump, a lousy president, is right. The hope that economic freedom would lead to acting right in world affairs was dashed with China. We need to see them for what they are--an aggressive evil regime bent on making the world worse. Disengage, confront, invest elsewhere. Boot out Chinese students.
Friedman is correct that Trump has defined the problem with China. Trump likewise, to get elected defined the problem with the American electorate, recognized it and acted on it to win enough votes in the Electoral College to win the Presidency.
Trump is actually very good at defining and articulating a problem in need of a solution.
Where Trump is not so good is at defining or articulating a solution. His mental disease leads him every time to the same solution. Branding. Put a Trump name on a problem and then sell the idea that the problem is solved because the Trump brand has been applied.
The ability to define and articulate a problem is what gave the American electorate enough hope in this guy to elect him. But they are fast discovering that he does not know how to craft a solution.
Kim Jung Un, likewise, in North Korea has figured out the same. Xi will soon discover the same. So where Friedman and I part is on Friedman's hope that since Trump defined and articulated the problem with China, he'll be able to pilot a proper solution. Trump's history does not provide evidence to support this hope or supposition. He will drop this ball as well.
Real Problems require Real Solutions. Not advertising solutions promoted by a man who has lived by the con his entire life.
2
Recall Japan in 1989... '"The Japan That Can Say No: Why Japan Will Be First Among Equals"... followed by the asset price bubble collapse in 1992, and 2 'lost decades'. At the opening session of the CCP national congress in Oct 2017, Mr Xi’s plan was equally aggressive.
Perhaps, for China, it's 1991.
1
As someone who was involved in trade policy in Bush 41, it is my view that the premises under which China was granted favorable trade status with the West have proven to be abjectly false. Prior to being admitted into the WTO, China's growth-at-any-cost government flagrantly ignored even minimum conventions on human rights, forced labor, environmental protection, etc. It provided grotesque subsidies to strategic industries and notoriously flaunted intellectual property rights with regard to any technology worth stealing or misappropriating.
With full knowledge of those facts, globalist intellectuals within the Bush Administration argued that China would continue such practices if isolated, but would conform to international norms if allowed into the WTO. There was an amen chorus for this view comprised of every US law firm, lobbyist and consultancy who thought it was going to establish a Beijing office and get rich steering the Chinese through the US economy.
With its developing nation status, China trades in the US on terms more favorable than if its companies were headquartered in Pittsburg. And they still lie, cheat and steal with impunity. By contrast, a US firm simply trying to enforce its well-established contractual or intellectual property rights in China might as well pound sand.
I won't speak to Trumps strategy or tactics, but he is absolutely right that it is time to recapture some ground.
2
The one shared quality of Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR and JFK was their ability to 'see the whole board' and act only after considering the multiple options offered.
What is the most glaring inadequacy of Don the Con? His inability to see anything other than what he believes is in his personal best interest.
While I agree we are at a tipping point, my money would be bet on Xi to come out on top because he is dueling with an unarmed man in Don the Con.
there's no question that China's trade practices should be curbed but tariffs don't change anything but the price that American's pay for goods. maybe China suffers in the short term but it doesn't change anything long term. China has patience that the USA and its president don't.
an embargo would work better - but then again, there would be a lot of pain all around. China is used to pain.
what trump doesn't understand is the concept of face. xi can't afford to lose face because that would snowball into a loss of everything. trump has to understand that he can't dictate policy to China but must be willing to give something up so that nobody loses face. xi understands this.
until that point - chaos reigns
Thank you Tom Friedman for another thoughtful column.
As outlined in this article will someone please explain to Trump Mnuchin and the American public that we are bargaining from an extreme point of weakness. China has already won the long-term game globally. China also realizes that Trump is simply using the trade talks to" spin a win" for his 2020 campaign. China built their "export empire" on hard work and government support. Our "vulture capitalists" cashed in and sold our industrial capacity to the highest bidder. We can comeback but we (industry, labor and government) have to do it from the ground up not by placing 100 pound weights on an olympic sprinter so the fat man can win one race ?
Finally, China and the world know that any agreement with the U.S. is not worth the paper it is written on. The U.S. will simply walk out of any trade agreement when anticipated results don't work out. The damage has been done.
I am a Chinese American who has been living in the US for over 20 years. I disagree with Mr. Friedman in many of his views. His article lacks of many facts and indicates that the whole world has to obey USA no matter what and USA can benefit from others, but not the other way.
His statement that "When we let China join the World Trade Organization in 2001," is an indication that “we” USA controls world. We let other nations do things we like.
Apparently, USA thinks it owns WTO.
Mr. Friedman also mentioned Chinese forced technologies to local companies. The underline thinking is that Americans just want to use Chinese cheap labor and natural resources to fill the stores like Walmart and Macy's. USA doesn't want to share its wealth and see improved China or other countries. USA wants to keep its dominance by suppressing other nations.
USA has considered itself as superpower and has bullied other countries even like UK, Germany, Canada, Japan, it is time some country to say NO to USA.
1
Thanks, Thomas, for putting it all on the table for us. It's way past time for people to come to grips with what China has become and how we've gotten to this point in history. The country is an economic, security and values issue of monumental proportions for the United States, its allies and the rest of the world.
China is like a dragon that we've fed, pampered and, to a degree, spoiled since it was small. Now a full grown creature that could do great harm (or great good!) we need to firmly insist that it play by the rules of the rest world. Here's to hoping that it will!
5
True China has been involved in unfair trade practice, but we should also introspect ourselves - are we going to break fair-practice rules too because we do not want “the best to win”.
Thomas F. is disingenuous about 5G security. The messages are encrypted and if faster decryption methods evolve, so will encryption too. Encryption has plenty of headroom (with or without Quantum computing). I dare say this because I understand this space.
2
Nixon went to China and opened the door to a closed society willing to engage
The recking ball strategy may or may not succeed. But at certain point Trump will need to step back and engage in a more respectful manner
President Xi stated Ttrump enters a negotiation like a boxer. That doesn’t fit China’s culture or encourages negotiations.
South Korea’s President was successful and opened the door for trump to engage
From everything I read China is considering making itself less vulnerable by developing technology to produce whatever necessary in China and not depend on outsiders This may backfire in many ways
Wow, everyone here including Friedman is cheering for Trump, just like everyone in China is cheering for Xi. Still hope for a good outcome at the endless end?
Things are complicated, history, trade, environment, ... Traveling in China, you will see the price of development (or the unbalanced trade with US) -- polluted air and suffocated smog all the time except for a few hours following a heavy rainfall. Seeing and breathing it, I bet that most of the progressive readers here will think twice who has traded better.
As much as I want to see a rapid, significant change in Chinese political/economic system for the better (i.e., like ours in US), only those with very little understanding of Chinese history and culture would isolate trade from other issues and demand for impossibilities in the name of trade. Failure in this trade negotiation will be failure for both China and US, NOT just in trade. To negotiate is to comprimise, and be practical, both sides, about what the achieveable goals are. Do not aim at an once for all, grand deal, unless you want to use it to boast for 2020 election. Patience.
1
China never dreamed it in a million years that America would elect someone would dismantle all of American's geopolitical assets and hand them over on a silver platter in return for nothing more than a few cheap words of praise to carry over a news cycle.
The Chinese century was inevitable, but even China has been knocked off balance by how suddenly and decisively it arrived.
5
“Either the U.S. and China find a way to build greater trust – so globalization can continue apace and we can grow together in this new era – or they won’t.” Tom Friedman
Our president doesn’t comprehend win-win; his method of operation is win-lose. Fighting is better than diplomacy Our military is in the business of fighting wars to win. Even in 17 countries, we don’t seem to be doing much winning. Also in recent years we have been guilty of aiding groups in many countries that want to overthrow their elected socialist leader.
I’m tired of Trump’s destructive approach. China is a vast country with a vast population which must be clothed, fed, and kept in peace. Here in the US we should stop pretending that we are the ideal democracy. We must live with the good, the bad, and the totally uninformed. No one should have trouble choosing win-win over win-lose.
2
Tom is always trying to get on top of and ahead of everything. Always operating within very confined givens. The leaders of the world's ruling powers have so much more in common with each other than they do with the rest of us. Maybe Tom can take a breath. Not quote every businessman and politician, the occasional taxi driver maybe, and actually through his silence be a model of sorts, that not every false choice dictated is a choice that needs to be considered. Admittedly he might lose his job. The constant noise of the foreground is all that is basically permitted. Hopefully he has enough savings so that won't need to be a consideration.
2
China didn’t take advantage of the poor old toddling capitalist United States, our brilliant capitalist business managers and boards gave away the store with our consumer population cheering them on by buying Chinese made products at a lower price than if they were made here. Why buy two well made shirts a year produced by American workers in Maine, when you can buy 10 well made shirts a year made in China? I’ve seen the enemy and it is us. My small home has five TV’s; four flat screen and one ancient picture tube type, none of them were made in the United States nor could they have been as there is, to my knowledge, not any U.S. TV manufacturer. When I grew up in the 50’s our home had one TV in a wood cabinet. Boy, in so many ways, are those days gone. In capitalism, everything being equal, the business goes to the most efficient (cheapest) producer. In our case, we love our capitalism until we don’t.
4
Trump can only see the results of his trade war with China ending with him winning and China losing. When Trump says America First he really means America First...and everyone else last. That mindset prevents Trump from creating a partnership of nations accomplishing what is best for the world as a whole. With each nation only pursuing their own self interests every country is the lesser for it. And you can be sure that Friedman remembers the global political climate before the World Wars and the steps taken after them to prevent another such conflict. Trump works every day and in every way to undo those steps. His trade wars are just a short sighted way to reap some profit (and a bump in approval ratings) now at the potential expense of a balloon payment due some day that leads to a degradation of quality of life on our planet.
3
While Trump may be correct in confronting China's trade practices, his tactics are all wrong. Rather than gather such willing and weighty allies as the EU, who would have been happy to join, he instead chose to also threaten trade wars with the rest of the world. If Trump were a general, he would choose wars on all fronts (except maybe giving a pass to those that bribe or blackmail him [hint: begins with Russia]).
And one other note: It seems odd that America's farmers are so supportive of our technology companies that they are willing to suffer huge losses in soybean trade to China in order to support Trump's trade war. Possibly they don't really understand these objectives.
2
I am not a Donald Trump fan but I must say that if Trump is right today, he was right 15 years ago. Tell me, why was China’s behavior tolerated back then? Was the motivation really the bedtime story that trade and investment with China would make China more Western in their values and methods? Hardly. The answer is plain and simple, as the subtext of this column well illustrates. In the past, the big boys wanted an opening to China’s cheap labor and market potential. But today China’s “closing” means the non-Chinese big boys are losing out. Really, Mr. Friedman, where were the alarm bells for the impact of China’s behavior on smaller businesses and the American worker back in the day?
5
Besides political miscalculation since Nixon era (that Chinese Govt and most Chinese people will learn freedom, democracy, liberty and blah blah once we integrate them in global economy, allow them to get education and a life in the US and other western democracies), American corporations also lobbied to open up to exploit Chinese communist dictatorship to use low-paid sweat-shop laborers (almost like slavery), ease to pollute environment at will, ignore any human rights and labor law applicable even to most rudimentary form of democracy in Asia and Africa. That greed by so many western companies and their political clout are equally responsible for rise of autocratic and imperialistic communist regime in China who are now threatening global peace and prosperity in many parts of the world. Corporate lobbying by such western companies must be curtailed if we want to actually promote democracy in the world or even in our own countries that follow (western) democracy.
Promoting countries like India, Brazil, South Africa etc, who still have functional democracy, are much better for our own interest and the interest of the world. Promoting any autocratic regime- communist or religious theocracy (mainly Islamic) must not be appeased by USA, which still have some faith in open society and democracy and still enjoy global super poower status.
2
There seems to be lots of blaming of U.S. "consumers" for "loving cheap goods", yet it seems to me this is putting the chicken before the egg. Back in the 1950s, most working families were glad to have small homes, one bathroom to share, and one car. Maybe a week's vacation. And, remember, all this was afforded on one salary. The slowing of wages started a little later, along with "free" trade, and behemoth stores showed up in towns previously full of locally-owned shops. Putting two and two together, many towns eventually only offered "cheap goods" at Walmarts, and families - with both parents working - shopped there because a. it was about all they could afford and b. it was the only game in town.
3
It has to be said out loud:
China has its eyes on global domination - complete and utter submission of everyone and everything on the planet to their control.
They have used free trade and our capitalistic values against us, and will continue to do so. Trump is right on this one.
6
@Shiloh 2012 Indeed! Their goal is not "mutual benefit", this is "restoring the right order, Han Chinese on top, everyone else beneath"
1
Yes, just like Nixon is known for his opening up of China; Trump will probably have one redeeming quality of re-balancing the relationship.
The parallels are everywhere....
1
Here again is expressed the odd idea that infinite growth on a finite planet is possible, or to be desired: the goal with China is to build trust so that "globalization can continue apace and we can grow together in this new era." Some kinds of growth are not quantitative (growth in empathy, for example), but the kind of growth touted here is not sustainable.
4
Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.
We had a guy that was dealing with China whilst also not alienating all our allies and disrupting the world economy.
10
@Biz Griz
Then why was it negotiated in secret? Didn't the other candidate also promise to not join the TPP? Are you here to admit she was just lying to the voters? The voters knew that and didn't believe her after Mcaulliff but anyone who voted for Trump only did so because of Putin's facebook ads?
@GregP What's "secret?" TPP wasn't negotiated in "secret" any more than any other treaty or issue of state. Do you want to get rid of NATO because it was negotiated in "secret"?
Trump has fully exploited the tactic of laying a finger on the pain- whether that be healthcare or jobs or the massive trade issue at hand here.
And so many Americans respond to that -"See, he gets it/us!"
But diagnosing and curing are not the same thing. He has demonstrated exactly zero success in "curing" anything.
So why do so many still believe?
3
How did China force us to make technology transfers?
@HT
Ask any COO, CTO or CIO of any major maufacturer or proprietary technology or software and they'll be happy to share private stories over a beer. I have, which is how I was informed.
2
@HT If a company wants to do domestic business in China (not just have a part in the produce/export realm) they have to "partner" with a Chinese business. As part of that partnership, they have to share their IP, R&D, etc...so then China can then just copy/reverse engineer it and take the value others have created for themselves, then undercut the foreign companies with sate subsidized export driven business, etc. In the trade negiotnations, China was willing to 'reform' tech transfer. The issue that caused talks to fail was US saying "okay, put it into laws and regs so we can be sure". China had no intention of keeping this promise/following through, and so said "no, that is unreasonable, just *trust* us (and we'll do all of this sturm and drang, then make a paper agreement and buy some more soybeans every two years since you fools are stuck in your messy democracy while we plan in decades)"
@HT greed of our corporations.
Negative side to globalization: elites become less accountable to their own population who actually elect them to the office and try to find common language between each other, incl. authoritarians (Trump-Putin), at the expense of strategic interests of the respective nations. There is Club of Rulers-Billionaires having more in common between its members than people they formally represent. By the way, look at Ontario, Canada, where an attempt is being made to build up another reservation-this time for immigrants by way of crashing medical services and rent control for those who are only formally regarded as Canadian citizens but are exploited like petrol wells. They came from Third World so they are treated like Third World, like dirt, so that all economic indicators for the province are going downward. It's too early to bury the idea of a nation-state which has been a foundation of the human progress for at least the last three thousand years. Globalization has become a new form of colonization and aggression.
2
Chinese President Xi has hyped his rhetoric and built Chinese expectations so high it is going to be hard for him to do anything that will slow down their growth. His survival depends on them continuing on the same path-grow at the expense of America and the west!
3
One may laugh at Donald Trump or wish that his Twitter account gets disbanded. But, what ever said and done, he only had the guts to hold Chinese by the collar and try bring them to some reasonable position. Otherwise, all Presidents before him, had simply acquiesced before the Chinese, and would definitely be able to curtail its growth , at the expense of US.
7
Because, as Friedman explains, America’s exporters were willing to go along. Now the costs are outweighing the benefits of trade with China and the relationship has to change. Too bad Trump couldn’t work with other Western countries, who have the same issues with China, to accomplish this reset together.
3
All of China’s major industries are government owned and controlled, with CEOS who are allowed to become rich and are part of the Chinese political elite.
There is no fair competition with these companies for they have the full resources and power of the Chinese Government behind them.
And the author demeans the loss of low-tech manufacturing. Does he realize that it the loss of those 6 million manufacturing jobs in our industrial belt and South that facilitated the rise of Trump and his xenophones. While those jobs may not be as glamorous as working for Apple they were jobs and people depended on them to take care of their families.
China stole a major part of the U.S. economy that was created by individuals, and they did so with the help of people such as Friedman and his Flat Earth indifference to working people in America.
6
@Pat Choate +1!
>>>...but he sure is the American president China deserves.>>>
Which brings to mind the more important question; why and how were past presidents such weaklings when faced off against China or Mexico or Canada or Europe. etc.? How and why were our Presidents always so willing to gut the middle-class in the name of free trade. Whatever else Trump may be guilty of he certainly has exhibited strength in righting wrongs inflicted by past Presidents regarding unfair trade practices. Good on him. Shame on the Trump's predecessors and shame on their political parties.
230
@wilt
Easy to blame government for this condition or commend them for action. This goes much deeper. Americans want cheap and bountiful goods. Companies want cheap labor and market access. US companies moved a lot of their manufacturing to China and elsewhere because of costs and promised growth through market access. They could have decided to build in the US but they didn't and aren't because of costs and a shrinking US market (compared to the total world market). Lobbyists were charged to protect this corporate and consumer interest and government officials responded to this request.
Trump is not doing a good thing by pouting about the state of the world or starting a trade war. We need to have a collective discussion with allies and chip away at the unfair issues a few at a time until there is some balance. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is sidling up to despots and insulting allies and using nationalistic rhetoric.
166
@wilt, this is classic example of cutting one’s nose to spite face! It’s not “past presidents” as in your anxiety to ascribe the blame to whatever the state we are in (which my any measure is not bad at all), it was our western values of fair play, honesty and decency which were not matched by a predatory culture. Natures by design is not a zero sum game and fair trade sits on top of it.
Our values will sustain us. Along the way, if we tame our instincts for instant gratification and a sense of entitlement, that will help too.
Our love affair with the “ancient culture and thousands of years of history” hopefully will end as we realize that Chinese culture never reformed from predatory, oppressive, winner take all attitude. The West and Japan reformed and realized this is truly a small planet we all need to share, particularly after two world wars. The insecure, insular and closed Chinese society never did. Not yet anyway.
74
@wilt Hindsight is 20-20. What is so obvious now, especially in the face of the threats posed by Chinese communication tech and A.I., wasn't then. Read up and think more, not less. Don't be so kneejerk.
40
A good summary on the problem with China's trade relationship to the world. Obama tried to deal with China multilaterally with the TPP, but his efforts had no credibility because of: (1) bad trade deals negotiated by Democratic presidents supported by Republicans and a minority of Democrats in Congress (re: Clinton) and (2) his failure to use his rhetorical gifts to call China out in a full-throated fashion.
The Democrats should have been leading the charge on this one, but they failed because they were too cozy with Wall Street and the titans of the tech industry. The same relationships that caused them to loose the support of rank and file union members.
On most things I oppose Trump, but on this one I say, "It's about time." However, by going at it alone, he is setting us up for failure. China knows how to play the divide and conquer game. America plays best when we follow the motto 'United We Stand'. Without Asian allies, China will win.
7
Thomas Friedman neglects to mention an important -- and highly relevant -- factor in the motivations of Trump and his still-loyal supporters, including those in Congress.
From conversations over the years with conservative friends (blue collar laborers to white collar professionals), I've learned that they typically fear and bitterly resent the notion that they're being cheated and also being laughed at by the cheaters.
Hence, conservative opposition to social safety net programs; to immigrants from Central America ("They're just coming here to get free medical care and free education for their kids, and it's costing us plenty!"), and -- at issue here -- to trade agreements and international treaties in general. (It's astonishing how even well-educated conservatives absolutely believe that the nuclear weapon treaty with Iran was totally self-verified and that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were never involved.)
Yes, Trump and supporters are largely correct: China has been cheating America in many aspects of trade (especially their brazen disregard of patents). And maybe they've been laughing at us, too.
But Trump's typical reaction of walking off in a huff (to the applause of his base, who think he's being "tough") will only leave a power vacuum for China to eagerly fill -- as witness his trashing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have provided a major bulwark against Chinese domination of all Asia.
5
I fully agree that we need to put China in its place before it takes over the world, and I do ave some grudging respect for Trump's stance so far. But he is not up to the task. A businessman who has failed at nearly everything in his life does not inspire confidence on an issue as tricky as this. And, he may not have time anyway. I doubt he'll be president two years from now and Xi doubts it too. China may be able to run out the clock on this mess.
269
@S North
Yes. China needs to "be put in its place." This type of language pervades the comments sections of most articles on China. A recent comment that drew huge support called for China to be "slapped down." One awaits references to the Chinese getting "uppity" presently.
6
China has the world's largest population, is only slightly smaller than Canada and boasts an ancient and distinguished history. What, to you, represents "its place"?
17
“I fully agree we need to put China in its place before it takes over the world.” I believe we should put America and Trump in its place before his administration destroys the world@AGM
12
Not often mentioned in discussions of trade with China is the willingness of corporate managers to sell out their own companies to gain access to "a billion new customers," the managers themselves reaping large bonuses in the process.
Perhaps the most glaring example was the Heparin crisis around 2007-2008. Chinese suppliers cut Heparin supplied to the US with a similar molecule that resulted in at least 100 patient deaths (known at the time). At the height of the crisis, it was unknown how much of the Heparin supply in the US was compromised. Even after patient deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars lost to this deliberate product tampering, manufacturers of Heparin still source from China. Why? Because managers get big bonuses for lowering the cost of their respective supply chains, never mind the cost to their own companies or even the human cost.
3
Spot on.
1
This column ignores two crucial facts:
I get so very tired of seeing people write "Trump will have to [fill in the blank]".
The fact is that Donald Trump is profoundly, monumentally stupid. He is the greatest con man in history, but besides this idiot-savant talent, he has nothing to offer. He does not take advice, certainly not from NYT columnists! He will continue to be belligerent, aggressive and cruel for as long as he has the power to do so. He doesn't recognize that he enjoys these privileges only because his daddy made a lot of money.
The other fact is that China has gone a monumental change in just the past few years. It has changed from the dictatorship of a party to the dictatorship of a person. For 40 years following the death of Mao, the Chinese Communist Party collectively made decisions for the country. Party Chairmen were subordinate to the party and accepted de-facto 10 year term limits. In Xi, China now has not only a dictator, but a messianic dictator, determined to make China the world hegemon.
This will not end well if the leaders of the world's dwindling democracies do not understand these facts and adjust accordingly to them.
Dan Kravitz
6
Good Mr Friedman, now maybe you should support the re-election of the wrecking ball in 2020.
3
Congrats! An objective liberal. When you are ostracized, you can team up with Dershowitz. Another profile in courage. No lie. Takes guts to tell the truth in the maelstrom of the NE Echo chamber that is the world of the Times. You could have added that the ridiculous House Dems are wasting time with this stupid Trump harassment. Those Dems should be supporting Trump in this trade war. Now, how about some House resolutions of support? Can you contact AOC and explain this issue to her? It will be hard but worth it. Media loves her. 😉.
4
Better late than never Tom. For the sake of full disclosure I think you should tell readers just what your yearslong position on “engagement 1.0” before you try selling them “engagement 2.0.” How many more Friedman Units before China is a democracy in the new version?
If you write the following sentence, I’ll buy you dinner at the restaurant of your choice(Wolfgang’s is nice):
“I was wrong, engagement has failed!”
6
The unspoken "read between the lines" message IMO is that the left progressives "Deserves Donald Trump" as much as China does. The left made the error of taking things too far over the Obama years; and we have many poor decisions and laws to deal with as a result. Additionally they have embarked on personalizing politics which is a despicable strategy- when they can't beat someone legitimately on the issues they simply attempt to destroy the person's reputation. Additionally the extreme leftists (which are don't exist according to the media) have no understanding of what it means to be a hypocrite- seen every day in the media and on college campuses relative to free speech. It's only free if you agree with their outlook. Lastly they adopted the belief that their fragility was to be embraced and that victimhood was a proud moment. Even if it took someone like Trump the Conservative Republicans and Independents needed someone to stand up to the never ending onslaught of the weakening of America.
6
Remember when Trump dropped sanctions against a Chinese company with the excuse that "too many Chinese people would lose their jobs"?
And as it turned out, there was a Chinese investment in a Trump property in Asia just after that?
That's Trump's China policy.
9
America and China both have the Presidents that they deserve and earned.
China did not hack and meddle in the 2016 American Presidential election in order to get Trump elected President of the United States.
' We will hang the capitalists. And they will sell us the rope' Vladimir Lenin
' It does not matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.'
' To become rich is glorious' Deng Xiaoping
' I preferred that Donald Trump become President of the United States' Vladimir Putin
' I preferred that Donald Trump become President of the United States' Benjamin Netanyahu
Facebook, Twitter and Google were useful idiots in getting Trump elected President of the United States.
Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning exposed the corrupt criminality inherent in the American military and prison-industrial complexes that shred the American Constitution and it's interests and values.
4
We have their attention. What's next?
What does it mean to live in a country that is a better place to live? Why is it better to live in America than in Bangladesh or Indonesia?
For one thing, it means you can get a better lifestyle for less effort. Americans of normal means can live better than their Bangladeshi or Indonesian counterparts. The same holds true for more educated individuals.
If you remove the barriers between countries, things start to level off. This is the so-called race to the bottom that Ross Perot anticipated with NAFTA. A Mexican or Chinese worker can do the same job for much less than an American worker, so guess who gets the job?
Meanwhile, the American worker still has to pay American housing costs. If they could rent or buy for less, they can work for less, but then Trump and the Kushners would lose billions. They are real estate speculators who rely on housing inflation to remain solvent. Housing deflation is not an option for them.
What barriers will keep America a better place to live than China or Malaysia? Tariffs are a crude form of barrier, but they are all I see. Yet to imagine that Americans can compete directly with workers in the third world and still live better is folly. Something has to maintain that difference for that difference to exist.
We have their attention. Now what are we going to do about it?
1
The author has repeated the accusation that China cheats and steals without providing evidence, a practice widely used by all the US media. I believe if there was clear evidence, law suits should have followed. (A guilty verdict should not have come from a propagada apparatus, like that of the communist party, if we truly believe in the rule of law.) This is a strategy Trump loves to use to denigrate the other side from the outset of an attack or negotiation, like, "the failing NYTimes", or "the overated Meryl Streep", without supporting data. The Chinese made most of their money by not only working hard, but also sacrificing their family lives (seeing their kids once or twice a year) and their environments, a heavy toll (and expense) not taken into account by the author. In the meanwhile US companies racked in huge profits (that's why Apple is so rich, and Tesla is moving its production to China). While millions of Americans enjoy inexpensive consumer products from Walmart that are made in China, they are also complaining that jobs are being "stolen" by the Chinese. Are we a fair people? Do we really consider, for example, the money we paid to our nannies, a trade deficit in some sense, is being stolen?
6
Great column from Friedman. It's important to be intellectually honest and not just condemn a Trump initiative because it comes from Trump. Trump's fundamental point about China is right, and it's unfortunate that Democrats -- who should have been looking after American workers -- dropped the ball on this.
Trump's more bellicose posture toward Airbus -- a gigantic taxpayer-subsidized European initiative to steal aerospace manufacturing from the U.S. -- is also spot on. Airbus MUST be forced to comply with international trade agreements and must renounce government subsidies (as must Boeing, whose subsidies are much smaller).
One thing the US president can and should be doing is to protect American industry by insisting on fair trade. Insisting on the end of subsidies and other illegal government help is NOT protectionism -- it's good for everybody.
6
In the first place, subsidies are not “illegal.” They merely violate WTO rules that we all agreed to...you know, the WTO that Trump refuses to use, and constantly attacks.
Second, if you think Boeing will lose those subsidies as we hear towards an election....sure, Santa will come take them.
And third. trump don’t plan or think through jack. What he does, is watch FOX and get mad, personally mad, about whatever’s on. Then he bellows. And then, he forgets all about it.
My skill set does not include understanding the intricacies of international trade with China, but I would love to see more manufacturing of goods back in the USA. Is that even possible? However, I do know that China’s influence in the world and Africa is growing mainly for extracting natural resources for use back on the Chinese mainland. Since China has emerged from the dark ages, it has had to provide it’s huge population, that has grown accustomed to modern needs, with petroleum, electricity etc.. This means China has to look elsewhere besides home to sustain such demands. So, why does the good ole USA help nations to grow and rebuild because when the pups mature, they will try to eat us? But for now - goodbye cheap plastic junk.
3
It's the correct title for sure. While many of us may chafe against Trump, its true the one thing uniting all of us is that the playing field was tilted against US economic interests in the trade relationship with China, whether it was foreign direct investment (capital markets access and participation, real estate acquisition and development and M&A of significant companies). Many of my Chinese friends even quietly tell me how it would have only take a fierce intransigent bully like Trump to give the Chinese corporations, executives and their daddy (the CCP) notice that business as conducted between 2001 (the year China was formally admitted to the WTO) until 2019 was no longer acceptable. And the European governments and corporations are fundamentally instinctive in self interest and survival to be leading the counter move against said common business practices, which we always suspected. I guess we can just all look at this kabuki theatre spectacle and know things will be different going forward. Not necessarily good or bad. But different. And isn't that the ultimate goal of compromise? Everyone a little bit unhappy!
3
If only Trump had a high school understanding of tariffs, a sixth grade level of schoolyard behavior and a willingness to learn the basics of anything.. then maybe something good could happen. But Trump's continued willingness to live in the land of the ignorant and cover it up with uneducated and unintelligible belligerence and bravado makes the outcome with China unpredictable. The one good thing he might accomplish, he is more likely to screw up.
4
Trump pulled out of the TPP, which would've strengthened his hand right now, simply because of his 'undo anything Obama did' mindset.
Now he's is standing up to China alone. He's in over his head.
9
Agreed! Please read Mr. Friedman’s article about Trump and the TPP.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/opinion/trump-china-asia-pacific-trade-tpp.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
The greed of American Capitalism is dizzying. How could we not have seen China's rise? We fed this dragon, exploiting their cheap labor, for decades. To say that we assumed they would become more open and democratic as they prospered is simply ridiculous; has America become more open and democratic as we have prospered?
9
Yes, in fact, we have.
Maybe learn some American history.
Mr. Friedman is largely right here. China's government has never really been interested in shaping and helping govern a global trade order. In part this is because it cannot. It doesn't have the power or influence to do so, even though it likes to present a facade of great power internally for a domestic audience while also trying to make a good show of power for others too. Beijing plays like a mercantilist while everyone else at the WTO has been playing the cooperation game (to be fair, the US cheats all the time; see: agricultural subsidies and barriers). Beijing can be ruthless in promoting its industries, even to the point of abetting technology theft. Anyone who browsed Baidu, Youku, RenRen, or any of the other blatant copy-cat web sites had to have scratched their heads at how Chinese tech firms got away with it. The answer is simple enough: big name American producers were making money and prevented a real response and Beijing wanted to block competitors to give its indigenous tech firms a chance to develop without competition. This worked well for people like Trump and his friends until it became politically inconvenient. The joke is that firms that were most invested in the China workshop are many of the same firms that Trump likes to use as props in his pseudo-populist appeals, firms that slashed workers in the US and were rushing out the gates to China once it made more profits to do so. As a true capitalist, Trump is the least likely to upset this apple cart.
3
Tariffs violate individual rights. Trade is a an individual right.
1
Actually Sam, it’s not. The Supreme Court has held that there is no right to trade internationally.
1
"Greed is good."
American businesses, management and share holders were and are making a lot of money from trade with China. China's middle-class is drop dead enormous. They have little discipline and no incentive to change regardless of any future trade deal. Pressure from the American business community to put things back to the way they were will only increase as long as trade war is stalemate. China's government is in the business of business but America's government is not. China's new economic model is a hybrid of Capitalism that that may well win the future.
TPP under Obama was supposed to reign in China's power. Bernie et. al vilified it as anti-labor. Trump excoriated it as a sell out because it was proposed under Obama. The one chance we had to moderate China's hegemonic zeal with a united front of Asian allies collapsed. Right and left wing demagoguery bear equal responsibility.
2
President Trump has earned my support and vote in 2020 because of his tough stance on China. I am glad that he is a bull in the proverbial China shop in order to get the attention of the American public and the Chinese that our country is no longer complacent about getting the short end of the stick by an authoritarian, totalitarian regime that has destroyed American manufacturing and much of our middle class. If Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were President, none of this would happen.
8
You miss the point of the article which is that, yes, China’s trade practices must be addressed but a trade war and tariffs are not the way to do it. In fact rather than a war, a mutually beneficial agreement should be negotiated.
3
Thomas Friedman mentions "forced technology transfers" several times which was not "forced". Nobody "forced" US companies to transfer their technology to China. They could have stayed home and continue employing US workers. Instead, they traded their technology and the US workforce for a cheap Chinese labor.
5
To nearly quote Forest Gump; China is as China does.
I work in the audio business and have seen how and why industries have moved their manufacturing from to China.
At first it was plastic mold injection (in-wall speakers), then wood-grain laments (free-standing speakers), then basic electronic circuit boards (not terribly complex electronics), and then very complicated circuit boards (DSPs).
Over these steps, while many pointed to cheeper labor as the motivating force for lower costs, the reality was that the Chinese government was subsidizing the cost of the machines needed to make these products - as long as the company's owner kept employing, housing and feeding its employees.
For example, if you bought a pair of wood veneer speakers made in China in the early '90s, the speakers would have looked like a joke. But by the end of the decade, they were beautiful. How did that happen? Because we taught them how it should be done & China paid for the machines that were needed.
The point is that we did know that while brandname speakers left through the front door, others left through the backdoor with some Chinese name on them. We were comfortable thinking that the misspelled Chinese brand would never sell or compete against us. For higher profits, companies made deals with the devil.
I build my products proudly in the USA but the way tariffs are now, my cost for raw parts are taxed higher than a competitors finished component made in China.
Stupid is as stupid does.
4
I am reminded of the 100 years of shame of China. How they are not fighting wars but putting their companies and money strategically around the world in many countries. They build infrastructure and the like and they create fake islands. I never hear anyone talking about this. China is taking revenge for the 100 years they were bullied and ransacked by Americans, British, and more .
2
Trump doesn't work well in multiparty negotiations (diplomacy). But when it comes to bullying one nation at a time he is a master. He alternates between sarcastic hyperbole and simplistic serious peace offerings. It is up to the other party to figure out which is which. He teases the cat with catnip and then for no reason he reverts to "No soup for you." The Chinese have yet to figure out a gambit that works as a defense against this style. Trump is both the good cop and bad cop all rolled into one confusing mess. With China, Trump's approach is both needed and so far working.
2
Such biased opinion. Why US can accept Nokia and Samsung, but not Huawei? Huawei earned its status along the way, just like any other companies in the global market economy. It's shame and a disgrace to put Huawei on the entity list by President Trump.
4
Hard to call the West a “responsible stakeholder in globalization”, since when? How many colonizations and empires, useless wars and military actions do we have to forget to do that? We pillaged and stole all over the world. If it wasn’t electronics it was oil, diamonds, or metals. China, regardless of its tactics, has lifted 300M from poverty and its armies haven’t recently attacked any other countries. We have to agree on a yardstick before making us look better than we really are. And sorry: nobody deserve trump.
6
Yup! The realists and progressives have some cognitive dissonance going on. How can Trump be right on his insistence that China live up to its trade obligations and be so loathsome and mistaken otherwise—indeed, a threat to democracy?
My suggestion? Learn to live with it. It’s a complex world and ideology ain’t the answer to complexity. Wasn’t it Emerson who said that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds? One should be able to entertain sometimes contradictory principles. In some deep sense it’s what democracy’s all about.
5
Since King Trump doesn't read, I hope that someone in the WH will read this out loud to him. Better yet, create a slide show using cartoon characters to the get the salient points across. Trump says he's responsible for our economy and hi flying markets so I'm assuming he will place all the blame on Xi Jinping and anyone or any event in the U.S. for this mess, maybe both. Yes, the Chinese have done everything Mr. Friedman has pointed out, but The Art of the Deal "author" is failing miserably at the negotiating table and taking us all down with him--again.
1
China “may” have deserved Trump but what can you say about our millions of voters who continue to support this miscreant because they love his middle finger in the air attitude towards everything that has made America strong and good? And what about the Republican Senators, starting with that Constitutional violator McConnell, who refuse to recognize an immoral, unethical, lying President?
If China deserves Trump does the majority of voters who DID NOT VOTE FOR THIS — DO WE DESERVE HIS ILL TREATMENT? That is an even more important question.
1
Well said, Tom.
Only bully has to be counted by a bully. Just no other way out.
Hope someone in Trump's team is smart enough can make check and balance such that our bully will get off whack too far.
Keep our fingers crossed.
2
It took an emperor with no clothes to confront the emperor with no clothes.
1
Trump has done nothing to China, not a thing. Tariffs are paid by Americans, so consumers in America lose or companies importing Chinese products will lose. We have little choice because American companies moved production to China decades ago to get very rich. And a relative few got very rich and that helped to hollow out the middle class as 40,000 American factories were shuttered and secondary jobs based around manufacturing towns went bust. The CEO's of these companies who self identify as being Republicans 95% of the time now support Trump whose businesses products are made in China. And to think the people who were laid off support these same Republicans is well kind of stupid isn't it. So many in America got what they deserved for being ignorant and voting on social issues that are fundamentally meaningless to their children's futures. What to do now? How about get really tough on China in banning Huawei's products outright in the U.S.. How about reforming the WTO. How about changing our laws and enforcing IP protections with real teeth to the thieves from Bejing? How about ending the money laundering from China and Russia and facilitated by U.S. global banks that are pricing the middle class out of our cities due to foreign investment. How about not attacking our Western allies and develop a true alliance to resist state actors that steal IP, ignore WTO rules and illegally support home industries to capture market share. By the way, you don't negotiate with a thief.
1
Look at what's happening in Venezuela because of whom. Why can't some of my fellow progressives, liberals, democrats or even moderate Republicans make the connection for foreign policy? Sad.
1
Let us give credit to Trump - an American President who understood the changing geopolitical scenarios and decided to address the Post-American world challenges. In diverse governance structure of that world can not managed by the simplistic one size fit all institutions like WTO, UN, IMF, WB. America needs custom strategy for different countries. Gradually an America-China strategy is coming out of Trump Administration. The picture till now is partial - all four major global flows require comprehensive strategy framework in the tug-of-war. Trade war will address the supply chain flows. The technology flows can be addressed by commerce department list and global Magnisky Act. The comprehensive immigration reform can address flow of people. Till we need strategy of financial flow management. The globalizations’s main driver is the flow of capital - Hong Kong, Shanghai UAE and Singapore are gradually taking control of this flow from New York and London. Time has come to take a deep look to this shift and its impact on Post-American world.
3
There is no strategy coming out of the Trump administration. Only noise and belligerence.
"I'm not sure Trump understands that."
Mr. Friedman, I'm certain that Trump doesn't understand that.
4
Values and culture are in conflict ...
In China, first priority is the nation, the government, then the organization or company you work for, then yourself. Stealing trade secrets is a must if it helps the country or my company. In that culture, “wrong” means not supporting the government or company. That’s why giving Huawei access to 5G and our facts, data, and potential control of water systems, electrical distribution, etc. is scary. Not like google reading all gmail to find sales opportunities. Whoever has access to 5G data has total control as their option. Read Tim Wu’s The Master Switch.
Does this piece amounts to an admission that Trump’s approach to trade with China may be right? Just curious.
1
No, quite the opposite! The point of the article is that Trump’s approach to China’s trade practices is wrong. Tariffs and a trade war are not necessary. Friedman is arguing that the US and China should work out a mutually beneficial agreement.
Trump is like an oncologist who diagnoses a cancer and then prescribes the wrong treatment.
Brilliant analysis.
The Trump administration's confrontation of China reminds me of a line from Alexander Pope:
"This is the final treason: to do the right thing for the wrong reason."
Your main premise is flawed. Trump does not want "globalization to continue apace." His isolationist, nationalist America First philosophy, and ignorance of the fundamental economic principles you discuss, preclude intelligent and reasoned negotiations.
2
I've been working as an engineer in the tech field for 35 years and dealing with China and Huawei was an eye opener.
They have a focus on grabbing technology for military applications and are generally untrustworthy.
The readers of the NYT may have a hate-on for Trump but he's the only recent President to stop the flow of critical technology.
If you haven't dealt with the Chinese tech companies, you really don't know.
3
Just about the only thing I agree with Trump on is this administration's stance towards China.
CONCLUSION: Without China, we'll pretty much have only ourselves to whom capitalism's requisite "liar's poker" needs to lie. Unless Newt Gingrich's plans to colonize Mars can quickly find new customers!
When America “opened” to China it was driven by corporate greed. The Corps saw tremendous – profits from importing cheap products and controlling a new Chinese economy. They ignored losses to working Americans and the national security consequences of aiding China’s growth. Imports and foreign investment were facilitated by cheap money through consumer, corporate and government debt.
China did not allow multi-national control of its economy (who can blame them?). The Chinese demanded state of the art facilities and access to know-how. Phase two is home-grown innovation. Cheap money caused huge "asset” price inflation. The Corpsattempt to control China’s economy has failed. They have created a monster international competitor. They want their government to control China. They're leader is a moronic con-man elected (ironically) by the workers they ignored.
The Chinese still believe in the Middle Kingdom and will continue to work to dominate. Efforts to re-order global supply chains may collapse the world economy. Increased military conflict seems a likely next step. The Corps face the loss of global market dominance. If China wins, the world may find there is little difference between U.S. and Chinese dominance (if you think the U.S. doesn’t use American installed technology for espionage then I’ve got a Trump Tower I’d like to sell you). The rich are facing the eventual collapse of the house of cards which is their mountain of debt and inflated equity holdings.
American CEOs were and are more interested on the bottom line. Not on the life of his employees. So, sending jobs to China was a "better" solution! Until somebody found that good paying jobs were sent there also! Today, there is no US company manufacturing 5G equipments, none (Wikipedia lists Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson).
Great article from Thomas Friedman. He tells us correctly what we should do about China but leaves us hanging in the air on what we should do about our own brat, Mr. Trump. Patting and challenging him at the same time is pretty exhausting.
Friedman is the ultimate Coastal Globalist. He's been spouting his kumbayah globalism for years. And now he starts an essay about how Trump is doing the right thing with a negative comment about Trump. And nary one word in this essay about how it was the corporatists, lawyers, bankers, consultants and journalists who sold out their fellow citizens in flyover country. Friedman was one of the loudest cheerleaders for the predicament we're in.
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@Bob
I know. You think he could show a little contrition about being so wrong for so many years.
1
Donald Trump is manifestation of a complete void of integrity at the highest levels of management of the US. The man is utterly unqualified to conduct business with any person who isn't another extreme present hedonist who forgets what was promised 5 minutes ago.
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@Steve Bolger
Trump is making America great again. That’s all I care about. Try reading “the Prince,” about what makes a good leader.
1
I don't understand China's rationalization about their pervasive theft of intellectual property. On one hand, they show great pride in their progress and manufacturing expertise. On the other hand, they are common thieves who will steal your fillings if given the chance.
Payback for pushing opium on them and gunboat diplomacy in the 19th century is one thing, but when someone says "Chinese Engineer" to me, I think a shallow and weak engineer and, most of all, a slimy thief.
Perhaps someone with insight into mainland culture can educate everyone.
1
I can’t tell you how greatly it pains me to even write that the Trump administration may be right about something. It is impossible for me to believeTrump himself is actually right about something. That’s about as rare as a unicorn.
1
Wow, it seems everyone is to blame but us. When was the last time you not only refused to buy an item bearing the “ Made in China” label but also told the retailer why you weren’t making a purchase?
Nations will to lose to each other fair and square seems Pollyanna to me.
It is China’s turn. Their Emperors 500 years ago did not choose to cross the Pacific and discover this continent.
China is our enemy they teach their children about how depraved America is yet our greedy political parties don't care where they get money from and there's the rub. Until we can eliminate about %90 of the money coming in for "elections" we will continue to sink as a nation squabbling amongst ourselves over the lies on social media the new public enemy number one.
2
Uh oh, it looks like Trump is winning the argument...
1
I agree. But you are talking about Donald Trump, who is the very definition of "man-infant". He is incapable of reasoned, rational interaction. He only knows 5th grade behavior. You are talking about pie in the sky.
1
Excellent analysis.
Wow, I'm seeing a lot of American nationalism (and its kissing cousin racism) in these comments, both left- and right-leaning. There's our real problem.
Unfortunately this is another cliche-ridden opinion piece from Mr Friedman who is echoing the Administration's incoherent policies based on jingoistic impulses. We are a people blessed with collective (and selective) amnesiac episodes, so let's remember Mr Friedman was for globalization before he was (as it seems now) against it...and the unforgettable episode when he was pro Iraq war before he was against it...and so on.
I long to see a well researched article from non political heavyweights that provide us with easy to understand statistics and predictions as to the damages that inflict (and will inflict) our country and China....as well as third parties...from this senseless trade war. Let's see some analysis as to how our agricultural industry will fare under continued retaliation...will China restrict the exportation of rare earth minerals our tech industry relies on? Let's see how China is harmed by the tariffs...which industries?
And let's call it as it is...it's not about trade fairness, but all about slowing down China's miraculous strides in its development.
OECD data predicts that China will surpass our overall GDP by 2040...what are we doing to surpass China?
Here's an analogy: we are in a race against a tough opponent, and we are trying to trip him by any means rather than train and speed up our own performance.
1
So, the New York Times is forced to admit what labor Democrats, people with copyrighted creative property, and owners of small industrial-based businesses have known for decades -- the US is giving away our economic strength to China in return for boatloads of trinkets produced with clouds of soft-coal COs. (Those windmill arms and solar panels progressives love? In 1,000 years they'll have produced the 'clean energy' that'll offset the pollution Chinese factories emitted manufacturing them.)
But instead of at least acknowledging that Trump -- whatever his faults -- has had the courage to take this on, rather than the cowardice to ignore it displayed by Obama, Bush, Clinton and Bush, the Times has to call him the human wrecking ball.
Oh well. Honesty is too much to hope for in these pages since the mantra of the Times became "Objectivity Equals Collusion."
2
Sorry, nobody deserves Trump. He stands for lying, duplicity, and immorality. He spreads dissent wherever he goes. A very destructive individual. But the Greatest Con Man in the World !
1
When I read “Moreover, in a dual-use world, you have to worry that if you have a Huawei chatbot in your home, an equivalent of Amazon’s Echo, you could also be talking to Chinese military intelligence.” I think “I don’t want either. I don’t want a surveillance state OR surveillance capitalism in my home.” It’s really not that hard to set my thermostat or turn on my stereo without talking to some creepy machine.
3
Even a spoiled, hissy fit-throwing, know-nothing spoiled brat can make a good point once in a while. Doesn't mean we have to start liking the him.
I am glad to read this here, in the New York Times.
1
So we'll either have a Chinese " chatbox" or an American Echo spying on us? I don't feel safe with either.
I guess Xi Jinping never read the Wealth of Nations. Who’d have imagined that a communist Chinese dictator wouldn’t follow the teachings of Adam Smith?
I agree, the United States of Amazon does give me pause. In fact .. wait, what .. China?? Oh, sorry, never mind.
Chinese are first and foremost Chinese. They have a proud history of over 2 thousand yrs. Nationalism, cultural differences run deep. Until we understand this theft of our crown jewels of technology such as the F 35, rocket guidance systems will continue.
1
Trump is a wrecking ball operator. Friedman is telling him to be careful about that Ming vase on the eighth floor. Not happening!
1
We have a millionaire journalist here - a man who never met a CEO he wasn't inclined to adulate - now uniquely perceiving some kind of silver lining/halo around the current Prince of Darkness. Curiously, the headline immediately to the left of this bunkum says the president of China has now "abandoned hopes" of dealing with the US. That fact-based article says Xi Jinping is busy rallying his one billion plus citizens for a long fight against our nation. Drunken sailors and millionaire journalists - what do you do with them so early in the morning?
weren't WE so nice to let China into the World trade organization. And isn't China so bad to want to secure free trading routes through out the world to trade internationally without the USA intervention in the Pacific. How militaristic of China to want to protect it's sphere of influence. It's not like we don't practice regime change in Vietnam, Korea, Latin America, South America, Libya, Yeoman, Syria, Iran, Iraq, to name a few. If we can't compete it's not China's fault in ours. We got some few smart minds and great spirit on entrepreneurship. We need not be worried. We should be worried if xenophobic ideology catches hold here as well elsewhere. IP stifles creativity and stifles advancement. If science research IP'ed scientific advancements we'd be still thinking the world is flat and God created life and the Universe and everything Barriers surely ain't good for trade and trade is been around since the get go.
NYTs your not getting it. We need to break down all barriers people should be able to roam the world unimpeded. That's my take NYTs
This piece is right on the money analysis which I agree with. What I can't agree with is the group think of TNYT editorial writers need for a Trump bashing headline and their inability to give our President some credit and respect when it is due. If Friedman could just have been a bigger person and leave his prejudices aside for once and say I agree with the Trump policy on China trade without the condescending headline I could respect him. But like most NYT editorial writers unless he does the group think Trump bashing he may have to look for a job elsewhere.
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@Henry Blumner I'll be darn if I can think of one time that Trump has deserved any respect. Most of us don't respect lying, chest-pounding blowhards.
Brilliant! So good to have an op ed not entrenched in political blue or red. The only problem, too long for Trump.
I miss the scholarly format giving important background, used here.
More of this type of please.
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Why no mention of the Trans- Pacific Partnership in this Op-Ed? Obama did a good job with that, Democrats opposed it, and Trump got rid of it. Where would we be if the TPP went forward instead of Trump killing it- seemingly just because it was an Obama project?
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@Doug M Except the only way TPP could have got through the Senate would have been an act of God, And that might not have worked. Let's ship more jobs to the third world for company profits wasn't playing well with the voters and still won't. TPP was a heckuva for a corporations for labor not to so much. There's no more appetite for "Free Trade" deals among the voters. TPP was a non starter to put it mildly.
3
Excellent perspective. But the discussion needs to evolve to a higher level. Keep in mind that as Charles Morris noted in his 2012 argument in "Foreign Policy" about America's textile giant Samuel Slater "... president Andrew Jackson called Slater 'The Father of the American Industrial Revolution,' the Brits called him 'Slater the Traitor.' " Back then, in terms of the "high tech of the time" we were the pirates, the thieves.
Rule of law? Win-win? Actually, cultures and values will define the parameters of trade and globalism debates to a greater extent than most of the other issues that economists and trade experts emphasize. Effecting change in these factors will take time... lots of time. I'm not sure that Trump will have much success in this arena in terms of China. In fact, he may be exasperating the problem.
As Russia has recognized, a major battlefield will be in the realm of information warfare and influence to impact these factors. Then, perhaps, realpolitiks may be applicable.
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I find it impossible to believe that anyone on either side cares a bit about the taunting and boasting. But there are substantive differences, and those are what do matter.
1
Friedman completely forgot to even mention China's most frightening export its own repressive government "philosophy" that champions the elimination of free speech, elections, human rights, fair trials, freedom from oppression, and any hint of democratic institutions in any form.
The stronger China becomes economically the more they become the go to model for autocrats and dictators worldwide and the more all the rest of us are under siege.
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How about a 50% tariff imposed on all products of American companies operating abroad. Then take the money and subsidize American workers.
1
I suppose we are caught between a hole and a hard place. China is now a superpower with GDP defined under purchasing power parity as 30 percent larger than the United States. That would be 27 trillion in 2019 and projected to be 40 trillion by 2025, although the latter number might be off a year or two because of our trade war. By 2030, China's economy may be twice the size of the European Union and nearly that with respect to the United States. So this is the new reality.
Everyone, meaning most economists and public policy analysts saw socialism dying in the early 1990s. Not so. China's hybrid command economy with markets may in fact be the dominant model for global political economy beginning in the 2030s. The United States can resist, and so can the EU but I think China is already too big to corral. We need to accomodate the East Asian giant just as Europe, Canada and Mexico must accomodate the United States. We may dislike them, but we don't have the luxury of trying to force to meet our terms.
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It's very sad that Thomas Friedman couldn't be bothered to discuss the Trans Pacific Partnership which Trump destroyed shortly after taking the oath of office.
It laid out a highly credible approach to dealing with China by creating a path to increase exports, especially ag exports, to Asia x-China and encouragement of imports from Asia x-China. In other words, Obama negotiated a viable containment strategy to counter China. One that would not burden all Americans with a $500/yr hidden tax due to tariffs, a highly regressive tax I might add.
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The American Corporate greed made China the monster bully it is now. Major American corporations in all major industries ( Electronics/Automotive/Consumer Goods-Retail-Clothing/Sporting goods/Shoes/Pet foods / Consumables/ Construction materials etc..) moved their manufacturing operations to China since early 1990s. These corporations went there to produce cheaper goods with the help of Chinese government subsidies and exploited cheap Chinese labor and laxed environmental regulations. They made a lot of money to feed America's appetite for cheaper consumer goods that cost American Middle Class Workforce their jobs and livelihood. Many skilled manufacturing jobs disappeared and created a rust belt that rusted thru the 21st century. Many of these skilled manufacturing workers have disappeared from the workforce. Then came the digital boom in 2000 which made concentration of wealth among top 1% increasing the wage and wealth Gap resulting in Trump. I agree we need to bring China to the negotiating table, I am glad Trump is doing that, except he is the wrong person dealing with our cards. I hope the next president will pursue the trade deal aggressively so we can have a better future for America and our future generations. We need more investments in Education to beat China in this unbalanced game. We need our educational institutions to give better access to education (low cost at the least) or subsidize college education to prepare our kids for the future.
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When it was the cost of labor that was being globalized unfairly by the Chinese and Bangalore - industrial and intellectual - Friedman and the liberal elite didn’t see a problem, encouraged it. Now that the core profit centers of global technology corporations are aggressively targeted by Chinese nationalists it’s an issue? What did Friedman think would eventually happen? Trump used fighting the labor cost imbalance to get elected because it appeals to the working class. Probably not much he can do but we will see. After the way they betrayed American workers Friedman and the rest of the corporatists can take a walk on this one.
1
You mean neoconservative elite...
The important question is not what is required to get China's attention, but what will get the attention of the Democratic political establishment. China has generally been getting along just fine with American capitalists, to their mutual profit. American workers who were not satisfied with the effects of job outsourcing ultimately had no one to turn to other than Trump and may continue to do so. Just criticizing Trump's bumbling moves, or the naturally selfish attitude of China, will probably not win elections. The establishment puts priority on protecting US patents and corporate profits - if there is any benefit in this to American workers it is from trickle-down. There has actually been a trade war going on and the Chinese have been winning; and the rich at the same time have been winning the class war. As long as both parties do the bidding of corporations inequality and political discontent will continue to grow.
1
Great summary of the current situation! I agree, this is the 'big one', and not just for trade. It's certainly much more important than who is answering whose subpoenas today!
I'm told we have very experienced negotiators on our side. What is not clear is how we build greater trust. I wish we knew more details. Following this negotiation on Twitter is a joke.
1
I can't help but wonder all these animosity against China, is it really because China's growth has been building on an uneven play field or is it because the Americans just can't stand the thought of losing the top place to China one day?
I say get over it already.
2
I am unsure Friedman has the whole picture. Of course late entries into manufacture of an item avoid R&D costs. There is a transition from a few expensive early versions sold at enormous cost to a mass produced item sold for much less. Example: the hand calculator, originally an $800 item decades ago, and now available as an app or a $10 stand-alone.
This rapid cost de-escalation is why the originators of items have to make hay while the sun shines, because once the market is shown to exist the game changes entirely to one of mass production and millicent cost savings in manufacture.
Unfortunately, once the first version of a great gadget is out there, competition blooms. As they said after the first test of the atomic bomb: the only secret of importance is now common knowledge: it works.
4
“America and Europe tolerated a certain amount of cheating from China on trade, is because Western Laissez-faire Capitalists believed the fundamentals of laissez-faire economics which includes, first and foremost, that a "natural order" rules the world and that there is no need for business and industrial affairs to be complicated by government intervention.
Present issues with China are without doubt more to do with the society which is built on the foundation of Laissez-faire economic theory opposing any government rules governing business affairs.
Without doubt laissez-faire as a system has moral ambiguities built into it.
American business freely dismantled the finest manufacturing base of the country shifted to China, forfeiting countless million of manufacturing jobs because it was natural order of Laissez-faire economic system, seeds of which were sown by Reagan/Margret Thatcher.
“Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don't go well”.
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Politics between superpowers are complicated and there are always trade offs. While China and America are conflicting over trade they must rely on each other on other core issues, North Korea for example. If the tension keeps escalating I won't be surprised if Kim tries to launch more "satellites" in coming months.
Trump holding China accountable is one of the few polices I support of his.
It was way overdue. I hope he doesn’t blow it.
We knew this was coming back in the Clinton years and GW Bush was too busy warring with Iraq a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 to do anything.
Now China has moved into Europe and Africa, investing in their infrastructure. This to me spells danger.
When you have politicians like Mitch McConnell and his Chinese wife (whose father is a Chinese billionaire and who is now our Transportation Secretary..Doh!) too busy lining their pockets with billions of dollars in business deals with China this is the result.
Our government failed us monumental. They should have been protecting our business and manufacturing interests not selling them to the lowest bidder, China.
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@Fire Sorry - we have no option but accept the whole package. One is essentially who is but not what he does. The one who is determines what he does. Do you really think there is any real difference in principle how the president does his foreign policy and domestic policies? If your answer is no difference and that is just who he is and does to people whatever he always does, then let us stop complain about his other “wrongs “ since he is right in the way he dealt with Chinese :-)
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@Fire
Funny how you hearken back to Clinton and Bush, but skip over Obama.
Why didnt Obama do anything about China?
Answer - because he didnt know how.
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@Fire, Elaine Chao is as American as you are (assuming you are). Whatever you think of her politics, it is racist to suggest otherwise, and your facts are wrong. She was born in Taipei (not the PRC/mainland China), has lived in the US since age 8 and has been a US citizen since she was a teenager. We have a terrible history in the US of suggesting that non-white or non-Christian Americans are somehow less than fully American because of vague "dual loyalties." (See the Japanese WWII internment, stereotypes of American Jews' primary allegiance to Israel, etc.) Please do not further these types of tropes.
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Pursuing all potential avenues to stop the theft of intellectual property is the right thing to do and the US is right to insist that it be curtailed and takes actions to ensure punitive measures to achieve that outcome.
It is just that it leaves an unsavory feeling in the mouth that we outsourced that to Trump. It is like asking a mindless exterminator to clear the foundation of termites while also being fully aware that the same person is also engaging in ravaging the larger biodiversity.
Another observation is that it is duplicitous to argue that is illegal for China to provide subsidies to its local manufacturers. If you do so, then please recognize that we do the same here in the US and on a much larger scale. They are simply hidden at worst or not openly discussed at best.
Tax breaks for R&D spend, consumer subsidies for purchasing electric vehicles or installing solar panels, government / taxpayer money (DARPA, NSF, NASA, FAA etc) to support R&D effort at companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Technologies, General Electric etc. which directly feeds into their next gen products which are subsequently sold worldwide, precompetitive industry consortiums which lean on money from DoE which is then utilized to further the state of the art, etc are all examples of government subsidies.
In the end, US and China are no different from any private enterprise. They will find any and all means at their disposal to scale the peak.
2
‘China grew not only by hard work, by building smart infrastructure and by educating its people, but also by forcing technology transfers from U.S. companies, subsidizing its own companies, maintaining high tariffs, ignoring W.T.O. rulings and stealing intellectual property’. Are we just waking up to this? Hey, this was the situation when China “opened up” in the late 70s and the strategy was clear...following, in fact, a strategy laid out by the Self-Strenghteners for “Making China great again” in the mid-19th century. And in fact following the 19th century trajectory of American industrialization. Sorry, the worm has turned....
1
Would the TTP have challenged China sufficiently and been a better strategy than a trade war? I would like to hear more about that. And please, do not think you can predict that Trump will do anything rational or intelligent - for the country - if he perceives it will not benefit his bottom line now and in the future. Why did China get away with murder in the past? It was good business for the corporate giants. Short term profits and figure out the rest later. Later is here. Will either party walk away from a trade war? Will our farmers survive until they do? Trump has no sense of rule of law. Perhaps he should ram through legislation that goods like shoes and electronics from China are illegal on our big box shelves. I am sure his base would support it.
3
If Obama had tried tariffs, the farmers would be going ballistic. That said, if they're willing to tolerate it (while farms go bankrupt) and consumers (who actually pay the tariffs) are willing to tolerate higher prices, this may be the only chance to use our leverage over the police state of China. Hopefully corporations will eventually get on board and move manufacturing elsewhere. This may be the only issue I support Trump on.
3
China did not force any one. It is our own greedy corporations who shifted our manufacturing, built factories there, trained their work force, transferred our engineering drawings and our inventions and then bought every thing that they could produce?
This tariff war with tweets is only going to harm us and our companies loose what ever our market share is left in China, unless we have strategic plan for alternate manufacturing capacity. Imagine tomorrow if China stops exporting completely. Half the US retail and some manufacturing which sources parts from China will come to grinding halt causing loss of millions of jobs and cascading effect on overall economy. Sure we need to have level playing field in trade but this sledge hammer approach is going to cause long term pain to us.
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Free soul: Yes, the transplant of manufacture automatically transfers the tech. More than that, the problems and advance of the manufacture provoke new tech to solve and expedite issues that crop up from manufacture. As AT&T discovered by putting their R&D in New Jersey and their plants in Pennsylvania, even a geographical separation of a few hours drive was a competitive blunder that cost them dearly with their failure to exploit the integrated circuit despite holding key patents.
2
Our “ greedy corporations “? How about American consumers who want the cheapest goods? All those Walmart shoppers wanting their TVs, tee shirts, etc drive the economy. We have met the enemy and it is us.
3
Put more simply, China has developed to the point where the superpower that rules most of the world, USA, can't get away with the same bullying it imposes on others. Jealousy is the keyword here on the part of the USA, not simply "defiance". China grows while the US fosters its much smaller yearly growth on the backs of working people, whose income has stagnated since 1970 while that of the US, driven by corporate and bank greed, has been elevated by 250 per cent over the same period. We may not approve of the regime in China, but we should at least look at the economic situation with truth in mind, not bluster.
6
The major difference between the recent difference of outcomes between the US and China is where the governments of the two countries invest. We invest in wars with Iraq and Afghanistan and tax breaks for the rich. China invests in education, infrastructure and industrial research.
Sure, the China cheats in trade and that needs to stop. But it won't matter unless we change what the US invests in.
10
so where would we be now if TPP had been signed? Wasn't that a significant pushback on China's industrial-growth-and-trade complex? Don't we need some global unity to stand up to China's dominance and posturing?
5/22 9:46 am
2
Trump is a man who sees the world as "deals"; a point in time to declare victory. He buys or builds a hotel and "bam!" he gets the price and/or concessions and then moves on to the next conquest.
What he doesn't grasp is that international trade is more like changing tires on a moving car. There is no "deal". It is the management of interests and the constant re-evaluation of those interests that go on into perpetuity. Way beyond his attention span.
4
@RonRich: Trump's wake is loaded with lawsuits and bankruptcies.
2
I am no Trump supporter, I believe he is abhorrent and casts a pall over our Constitutional Democracy, and I believe that we as a society and our political system should be focused on getting him out of office. I also believe in free trade. That being said, I have felt that past administrations have been weak, soft, naive in dealing with China on trade and do support much of what Trump is doing vis-a-vis trade with China. However, he should be honest with the American people (what? why start now?) and tell them that tariffs will increase the costs they pay for products and that if we ever want to get a "fair deal" with China we as consumers must be willing to pay more for goods that we have been getting from China, that if we want to return more manufacturing to the US we will have to pay more as our workers earn more than do those in China (or those in other "developing" economies). We as a society must understand that there is no "free lunch" and we must take the long view. This includes Wall Street and the Corporate Boards where short term performance is all that matters. While Trump is willing to push back hard on China's trade practices, for him it is all about short term profits. His business track record suggests that he does not have the insight, discipline or likely the intelligence to execute a long term vision. I will give him credit for doing something long overdue, but this does not excuse his many serious flaws.
7
I find it ironic that Mr. Friedman's commentary is now weary of globalization. It was his book, "The World is Flat" more than any other that described and revealed to corporations the benefits of globalization. Now he is weary of the effects of globalization where the Chinese have become the dominant player. Remember, the genus of this didn't originate with the Chinese -- it originated from American companies seeking greater profits by shifting manufacturing to China and ACCEPTING technology transfer as the their entry ticket. Such short term thinking -- now we should be surprised that 5G or F-35 technology has been compromised and finding its way into the Chinese market? Seems to me that the Chinese have just played the western economic behemoths.
17
Fabulous column! Thank you for summarizing and articulating a very complex and pivotal issue. In particular, you put into words for me why - more specifically - Western countries are scared of 5G and other tech corps from China.
5
It's not like previous administrations weren't trying to deal with the problem. There was a little agreement called the TPP which, one may recall, was designed to significantly weaken China's trade advantages. Yet, due to populist pressure, even the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate abandoned said she would abandon this deal . Big mistake.
9
@Yo
Except that let's ship more jobs to the third world wasn't playing well domestically. TPP was unworkable all the arm twisting in the world wouldn't have got it through the senate.
2
There is a subtle, but ominous, shift in Mr. Friedman's deployment of collective nouns. Near the beginning of the piece he writes, "We bought China’s toys, T-shirts, tennis shoes, machine tools and solar panels, and it bought our soybeans, beef and Boeings." Presumably here he means we the American people/consumers/workers. The "it" (clearly referring to the country, China) breaks the parallel sentence construction, but to what end, I don't know. Further down, Friedman exclaims, "Trade can be win-win." The question hanging in the air here is, "For whom?" Is it us--we the American people/consumers/workers? Unfortunately the answer appears to be no. For Friedman the winners are the corporate behemoths: "Who can say how much more prosperous Google and Amazon would be today if they had been able to operate as freely in China as Alibaba and Tencent can operate in America?" Am I the only one who shudders at the very idea? Forgive me, for I cannot conjure up even the tiniest amount of sympathy for the unfairness of it all to the rapacious corporate monsters. And spare me any lectures on how their "win" would trickle down to we, The People.
18
@Lloyd Frank So what are your proposals for ensuring how "we, The People," get a slice of the pie. How about we, The People, get educated in skills the current and future domestic/ world economies will need, versus crying in their cups?
3
How do you suppose we the people do that, as our public education system crumbles and private educational institutions, especially the best colleges, become prohibitively selective and expensive? I have a feeling you’re not a supporter of raising taxes on the super wealthy back to post-war levels, so we could a) Improve public schools and b) afford the equivalent of the GI bill that helped create America’s amazingly once well-trained and we’ll-educated middle class.
2
@debra So who's crying? You suggest education. I could not agree more. Let's properly fund our public education system. Let's revive trade schools. Let's re-balance the top marginal rates to pay for it (and let's get the military budget under control). Let's smash the out-of-control off-shoring of corporate profits and the outsourcing of work. Let's promote and support strong unionization and the power of collective bargaining to return a small amount of power back to We the People. For starters.
3
we should care
1
Amen!
1
Walmart.
2
Friedman disregards the essential fact that the balance of power has shifted, probably permanently, from a US-centered world towards a China-centered world. The US cannot anymore force China to moderate its' aggressive national socialist economy which the Communist Party manages to maximize the country's power than it can force the moon to change its' orbit. The Chinese are a united country, increasingly educated, and seek to be the dominant country in the world. They will achieve that goal in my lifetime and I'm 63. The world has changed. It isn't 1950 anymore. We are increasingly irrelevant in the world, especially as we pursue our go it alone strategy. The key will be how to get to our minor role player status gracefully without causing another world war.
5
Friedman, you got your wording wrong—
NOT "It took a human wrecking ball"
"A human wrecking ball" (Trump) got China's attention, as it would anything it smashed into.
Don't say, "It took . . . " as though that's what was needed.
We don't like or want wrecking balls.
6
Rank ingratitude!
China has done more to enrich the lives of ordinary Americans than our own government. For many years now, consumers have been able to choose from a bewildering variety of clever, reliable, and affordable goods, gadgets, and fashion accessories from China. Chinese-made items are the mainstay of American retail chains like Walmart, Amazon, and the dollar stores, where all but the wealthy shop.
Now we hear claptrap about China's unfair trade practices, which is Trump talk for producing better products at lower prices. Trump claims that China "steals" American technology by overlooking the overly-generous patent and copyright protections that burden American enterprise to keep hordes of lawyers in luxury. Isn't that smart, not criminal?
Some right-wing commentators suggest that China stole the plans for our overly-complicated trillion dollar F-85 stealth fighter. Surely, China is not foolish enough to squander its fortune on this unneeded, unreliable aircraft and the aircraft carriers needed to deploy it. So, no harm done.
Trump's attempt to make Chinese products less competitive will backfire. Americans' cost of living will rise. All nations will note that the USA has become an arrogant, undependable trade source.
Boeing, take note! The Chinese airlines that have unfulfilled orders for Boeing planes will welcome an excuse to cancel their orders for the discredited 737max in favor of reliable Airbus planes assembled in China.
4
@AynRant: Economies of scale alone mean that what China exports is further down the cost curve than competitors manufacturing the same things in smaller markets.
@AynRant
Hogwash. China's growth has been fueled by widespread and state sponsored theft, Communist Party control of every citizen and the utter demolition of free press.
God help me, but Trump's stance on China is the only thing I've ever agreed with. Hell has frozen over for me.
8
Funny, but the elites, including NYT's own Paul Krugman, were quite happy with the arrangement with China. Sell out our middle class, watch stocks go up, so they can buy the same goods at Walmart or Amazon for less. It took the commoners in middle America to rise up and vote for a populist to get things straightened out. I have no illusions that Trump is the man for the job, given his dismal business history, but at least the ball is rolling. Whoever replaces him needs to keep it up. China needs to behave like every other 1st world country, when it comes to trade (and human rights, for that matter).
3
@Steve: Don't underestimate the implications to factory siting that follow from the fact that the US still uniquely clings to a quaintly obsolete measurement system unused anywhere else in the global market.
@Steve Bolger Not concerned. The world is already very adept at using metric and US systems in high tech, both in the US and abroad. That's the least of our worries.
What a shock that after forty years of large American corporations, from Walmart on, shipping trillions to China, for our corporations' fun and profit, to build it into the behemoth it is today, that China is now intensely competitive with us at the highest levels of tech. As any Ivy League college can show you, the Chinese have an intellectual advantage over us in terms of their combination of high IQ and willingness to work harder than Americans. Logically, they must have at least four times as many geniuses as we have, and we know they work harder than even our best. America under Trump is now desperately trying to slow down China's relentless, America-funded, march to world domination. We'll soon see whether this genii we are entirely responsible for unleashing can be shoved back into the bottle. I doubt it.
7
Thank you for this excellent editorial, which concisely discusses how China gained advantages in international trade. Trump is a wrecking ball, but he has the temerity to call out China for trade violations, and the EU for not supporting NATO as they agreed.
For this brief period of time, combining maximum pressure where needed in the international community, we will be the beneficiaries. We have been subsidizing world trade and other economies since the WW II, and we had to rethink our method of support while protecting our own economic interest.
2
Set a bully to stop a bully? DJT is not the hero we need to deal with the PRC. Once again, pundits prove apt at describing a problem w/o providing meaningful alternatives. Mr Friedman's basic answer to PRC cheating, stealing, lying, and bullying is an exasperated, "Knock it off!" Well, how -- exactly -- does Mr Friedman propose to deal with the PRC? What does he want the President to do? The Congress? American businesses? American consumers? Allies? The WTO?
2
Confronting China Inc. is necessary but the problem is that Trump is doing it stupidly and alone.
3
While China is guilty of unfair trade and business practices, Trump’s approach is akin to that of an incompetent doctor who would kill the patient to get rid of a virus.
4
The reason China grew was because it stole. Yes. But it was rampant capitalism in the US that allowed it including greedy US universities allowing thousands of Chinese students to be taught, in effect, American technology and of course steal the rest through espionage. It’s astounding to me that such obvious risks of imparting such knowledge, was allowed. But let’s be clear, it was capitalistic greed by the universities that can charge high prices, which somehow, Chinese students are able to pay. Then we have drug companies colluding to raise prices driven by capitalistic greed. And in fact an entire healthcare system that is capitalism at its worst - you pay up or you die. Then we have the NRA, driven and supported by gun makers earning billions on the backs of dead children murdered in schools. Capitalism. Trump attacks “socialism” but it’s a far better alternative to the sick, perverted, dysfunctional and deadly (literally) American capitalism. In my country, as well as all western European countries, the dreaded socialism provides free healthcare, controls drug prices, bans hand guns, and has a far smaller difference between the wealth of the 2% and the rest, through fairer taxation and social support. Consequently we have tiny murder rates, healthier populations, and, yes, parliamentary democracies that can never be subjorned by authoritarian wannabe dictators like Trump.
4
@Cranford: "Capitalists will sell the rope for their own hangings." Mao Zedong.
Thinking that Trump will forgo taunting via Twitter (his two favorite things) is optimistic at best, deluded at worst. Trump's "deals" in the name of the United States haven't been very impressive to date.
235
@Liz Turner
Hi Liz.
What yardstick are you using to rate the Presidents' deals so far--economics or the economy maybe?
Mr Friedman forgot to mention that Donald Trump is our President and he puts America first in his own way and it is not a failing strategy--in fact, how are your retirement accounts doing sine 2016?
It's pretty easy to criticize--just check out the late night TV shows-but it is much harder to get things done, especially without any help---but he will get help in 2020.
Messrs Adler and he newly elected Ladies of the House and Senate need to find something to do--maybe like taking care of the needs of those who elected them rather than hopping from one soapbox to another. I wish President Trump were vindictive.
Maybe Twitter is the way the President can talk directly to us and not have what he says 'interpreted' my the media including the Times.
Ah, speaking of soap boxes, I need to get off mine--if we could write the author it would make things easier and more relevant.
Thanks for listening.
Bob
3
@Bob Delmar In the long run it is indeed a failing strategy. He views trade as a zero sum game where any gain for someone else is a loss for us and as strictly bi-lateral. Many good are manufactured in several countries. We all, meaning everyone in the world, have access to lower cost consumer costs as a result of trade. His tariffs will result in some manufacturers moving abroad because that is where their largest markets are.
In other terms, he has picked fights with our allies and alienated much of the world. In a world that we can no longer dominate, we need allies and friends more than ever. In fact, the solution to our trade dispute with China will require the cooperation of allies.
16
@Liz Turner yeah you really hit the head there. Unfortunately Trump has no ability to keep himself from his juvenile tactics. The Chinese place great importance upon respect and trust during negotiations. You can't trust Trump and Trump has no respect for anything or anyone (except Putin).
11
The Chinese are liars, deceitful, dishonest and will never be trustworthy. In the woods we fight fire with fire. The trade circumstances are like a forest fire and we should never minimize that or stop pushing back against China and its despicable government.
5
@DENOTE MORDANT: Yes, the Chinese Communist Party is an interlocked directorship too.
When we’re talking about principals and rule of law...what about a 400o percent increase in a essential drug.
1
Trump is awful for the people of the US and the country as a whole in almost every respect. Mr. Friedman is correct, though: Trump is doing something right in his bumbling, incompetent way about it.
The threat of the Chinese military stealing information and intellectual property is a very real and ongoing problem. It's important for us all to be aware that buying anything with any IT capability and any component made in China is effectively the same as inviting the Chinese military into our lives.
It was explained to me by a gentleman from Shanghai: Marxist ideology means equal access to means of production, and since the 20th century, this runs deep in Chinese culture. The attitude among Chinese is that if *YOU* have information that enables you to produce value, than *I* have a right to that information as well; therefore, stealing that information is my right.
3
China's ace in the hole, and they know it, is their huge internal market. With the right amount of government subsidy and regulation, a powerhouse infrastructure and with a society hooked on transformation, there will come a moment when China won't care about or need anyone else. It's a bit like North America in the 1950s - before we got stupid.
1
TPP was the US led world solution to reforming china. Too bad trump blew it & is now sowing the seeds for WWIII.
1
Crooked Trump (projected onto Hillary Clinton) is not the person to get a win-win agreement with China. He needs to come out on top, whatever, it's in his DNA.
I wouldn't be surprised if he defaults on the huge U.S. bond portfolio of China. Six bankruptcies, fraud, and chronic stiffing of contractors is his past. People with ingrained patterns of behavior do not change. Who needs to cheat at golf??
1
Love him or hate him, he has China’s number and is the first president to call them out and put them on the defensive, something Obama should’ve done years ago .
4
Two years ago this article might have seemed balanced to readers and observers outside the USA, but today it rings hollow. In a short 30 months, the USA has in many of our eyes transformed from a mighty eagle bearing the torch of freedom into a gargantuan chest-thumping gorilla, randomly hurling burning stakes into the bush, as it smashes its way through anything and everything.
If US citizens turned their inward gaze to instead look outside of themselves they would observe millions of deeply traumatised world citizens who, seeing the Leader of the USA establishing himself and his country as the Sauron of the armies of devastation, look to China with hope that it may be the saviour of humanity from the terrible form the USA is metamorphosing into.
3
This column is nonsense from top to bottom. Point out the strategy, here. Do you think that denying China technology is going to work? Charging US consumers more for Chinese products is going to work? A bunch of ignorant cheap shots at China is not going to correct the problem. They are already turning elsewhere for the relationships they need. The Obama strategy of pulling the rest of the world into our circle to isolate China and temper their ambitions was the only thing that would have worked. Getting China's attention? You've been watching too many mobster movies.
9
So, who wins the war to become the World’s master of AI, future technologies and rule over the digital world?
Or, is there to be an analogue war fought conventionally first?
If I were running China, I would just hit back with retaliatory tariffs of 40% on all goods that kome into China from states that Trump won and kultivate relationships with South Murika for things like wheat, soy beans and other agrikulturial goods. I would want to kause as much ekonomikal pain to the people that supported Trump as I kould.
1
The China problem reminds me of the immigrant problem. American companies have wanted to do business with China for decades. 1.3 billion customers, after all, and a workforce and their products that cost peanuts on the dollar. At the same time, for decades, American business has wanted low-cost immigrants, legal and illegal, to work for them in the US for much less than Americans were used to, unionized and non-unionized. DC gave them what they wanted every time. Now, suddenly, there is a problem with the dishonest Chinese and the murderous, rapist Mexicans. And only the hammer and social media of trump can fix it. This is a classic case of the wrong man at the wrong time. To avoid a Chinese Cold War and a global recession, or worse, American business leaders need to stop playing both sides: on the one hand, complaining to the White House about the unfair Chinese and how their clever planned economy is whupping free market capitalism, (eg. an uneducated US workforce heavily in debt and no US 5G) and, on the other hand, whispering to DC not to upset their revenue stream and profits. Our great and wise CEOs who live on Mount Olympus in mind and money must show their stuff now and intelligently leverage their power and make concessions with the Chinese to come up with a workable symbiotic relationship for the future. After all, they got us into this mess. It's time they earned their keep and got us out of it.
3
A couple of Points:
I like the "China deserves Trump" heading!!
While it is very crucial that both countries work towards trust and a more rational relationship, Trump is certainly not the right leader to forge this (I don't know about Xi so much). So let's hope nobody is going to do something really stupid while we wait for Trump to disappear!!
1
Another reason China has surpassed America in riches, is by not spending trillions on stupid wars.
7
Perhaps China deserves Donald Trump, but what did America do to have him inflicted upon us. Yes, I know we voted for him, but that needs a closer look. While praising the intelligence of the American electorate, he secretly knows that they can be led around like a bulls with nose rings - only instead of bull rings, he uses their beliefs and prejudices to lead them wherever he wants.
If DJT doesn't destroy our fragile democracy, he has published the blueprint and playbook for some other demagogue to do it later. If a democracy like America's is going to exist, there will have to be a paradigm shift in human thought throughout the world.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of us all. When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
Thank you for a much needed and much appreciated explanation, Mr. Friedman.
All that you have to know is that the Communist party of China is its government. And all you have to know about the Communist Party of China is that it controls all of the businesses in China.
Even Trump gets some things right occasionally. Yes, he is the Human Wrecking Ball but is he Mr Fix-it? So far all he does is wreak havoc with anything he's concerned with. What he will do is re-create deals that other President's have made and call them his own. He doesn't have the mental capacity to deal with a power house like China.
1
Trump is not about win-win. He’s only transactional: he wins, you lose.
As president, he could’ve and should’ve gotten other countries on board to pressure China, but no, he insists on going it alone and being a bull in a china shop (pun intended). He is indeed a human wrecking ball.
3
The wrecking ball has probably already irreversibly damaged the structural integrity of the US.
3
Trumpism is the Viagra for intellectual ED. Too many people are not able to think independently.
1
This is the second article by Mr. Friedman in the past five or six weeks that is actually pro-Trump - although the writer would probably willingly be burned at the stake before admitting it. (The prior one was on Mr. Friedman's recognition - finally - that Trump was right and everybody else, like the N.Y. Times columnists and editorial board, were wrong in not considering the illegal alien problem a huge and immediate emergency.) The names of Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama are glaring missing from this account, but it is obvious that they are who Friedman is thinking about when he terms our current president "a human wrecking ball". Sometimes it takes human wrecking balls (now sanctified so that we no longer think of them as such) like the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, maybe LBJ and Reagan, to wake us up. If we can refer to Trump as at least being correct in his belief that a rebalancing of the America-China trade relationship is an absolute and ongoing necessity (as Friedman is being allowed to do by the Times), maybe there is still hope for the recently questionable honesty of the paper that prints all the news that it political agenda sees as fit to print. In itself, this is news!
3
Only fools rush in ... look how badly Our Dear Leader got played by Their Dear Leader in North Korea. Trump is playing checkers. The Chinese play 3-D Chess. Advantage: China. But, maybe, if Trump annoys Xi enough, then Chinese 5-D technology will be unlimbered during the 2020 election to help us be rid of Trump. Then, I'll proudly wear one of those Made-in-China, MAGA hats!
1
Say bye bye to the Dollar stores. It will be replaced by the 5 Dollar and up stores. That will show the Chinese?. der der der But make no mistake only the bottom will feel this. The CEO will still get his huge salary as he moans and groans about less profits for his company. Boo Hoo!
3
30 years too late.......
2
It pains me to say this, but Trump is directionally right on China. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
But the fight is now between Trump, a blow-hard, know-nothing power monger who wants to be a king, and Xi, a power monger who essentially got himself appointed king for life. Trump has everything to gain (in his own mind) and Xi has nothing to lose.
1
I suppose you could say Xi Jinping has a China First policy.
2
China cheats. Don't play with cheaters.
I recall the NSA listining in on millions of their own US citizens, (remember Snowden?) the US spying on Merkel and who else, ditto for the Israeli's on EU and the US. So China has only 1 party to choose from, the US has only 2, and every 4 years the country flip-flops to the other side of the aisle. Bipartisan judges, sherrifs, regulatory institutions in states and federal (EPA anyone?). Science is turned into an opionion, and alternative facts (1984 anyone?).
Critical journalists are labelled as enemy of the people, libel laws are being revisited, and a president that is not even elected by the majority of the people but by an extreme "elitist" group of so-called wise men (any women?).
And the country held for ransom by a small group of religious fanatics, well much like the "only" democracy in the Middle East aka Israel.
So please dear US, wake up, climb down from your self erected pedestal pointing fingers at others and acting as "the one and only God chosen country".
Imagine a China with 1,4billion people NOT controlled as it is now. You think immigrants from Mexico is a problem, how about 100million or who cares maybe 200million Chinese flooding the US ....or Europe for that matter.
We should be singing a daily hallelujah (or whatever cheers you up) for Chairman Xi as he grows the country, feeds his people and tries to keep them as happy as possible so they stay in China.
2
You can't take Trump in bits and pieces. An endorsement of anything he does is an endorsement of everything he does because his acts emanate from the same corrupt, amoral, racist place.
4
China grew by "educating its people", while we are allowing our public education system to go by the wayside. Shame on us.
639
@CEM The individuals I meet here in the US from China are highly intelligent but above all they are hard-working and determined. It would be an error to assign these qualities to the population of China.
10
@CEM Exactly. Yet Trump has installed the know-nothing DeVos in a position to destroy public education. It’s frightening.
42
@CEM
Really? China has grown through currency manipulation, free press censorship, political and party indoctrination that is only eclipsed by North Korea, state sponsored theft of intellectual property on a scale that is hard to comprehend, the isolation and internment of dissidents, and imposing heavy restrictions on foreign companies while the state funded home grown competition using stolen intellectual property. Chinese citizens who can afford it still send their children to the U.S. to take advantage of our University system (still the best in the world, by far). So are you sure it's shame on us???
25
Trump's one big contribution will be to have reset the relationship between the U.S. and China. Most favored nation status, helping China open through trade, other incentives, those days are gone. China needs to know that if all Trump does is reset that that will be enough for the next president to negotiate from new footing and a different position. As for China, a day of reckoning is coming. Freedom will come to China one day. The world will feel this shift like an earthquake.
3
I disagree with the headline "China Deserves Trump." No one, except those who voted for him, deserves Trump.
No one includes our fellow American citizens in Puerto Rico, our closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, our asylum seeking Central Americans, Cuba (whose country we invaded more than once), Venezuela (whose oil we covet), Iran (who has honored its nuclear agreement with us an other signatories), our NATO partners, and the rest of mankind whose suffering will increase as our fossil fuel Climate Change unfolds.
5
Back in the '90s, when China had a corporate tax rate in the single digits while the US rate was 35%, many US multinationals were induced to locate their manufacturing there( while cheaper labor gets all the headlines, the lower tax rate was a far more substantial cost driver). " Foreign Owned Enterprises" required local ownership under China which effectively gave the Chinese access to the technology employed by US multinationals manufacturing there. Meanwhile, there were virtually no tariffs on imports from China. We watched this happen as we hoped that the quid pro quo would be greater access to the China consumer market and were egged on by flat world proponents like Freidman.
Fast forward to today: 1.Access to the China consumer market is still limited, 2.our IP has been purloined and 3.our manufacturing base has been shrunk. Along comes Trump with a US corporate tax rate at 21% which is now lower than China's 25% and the tariffs on China imports. Even if a trade deal doesn't materialize to address 1., it will at least partially reverse 2. and 3. So, while you may not be down with Trump's style, may it's what we needed to get both our and China's attention. Let's not allow perfection to be the enemy of the good.
3
Reading this article and others’ comments, and there’s a theme of reluctantly-expressed support for Trump’s choosing to confront China’s trade practices, if not full-throated endorsement of how he’s doing it or where it may lead. I have to agree. And while I hope we can look forward to a new administration and close the book on Trump, this is one policy that the next administration should refine with greater diplomacy and dialogue, but nevertheless, should not abandon.
455
@Daphne
Next administration? Will not happen. Trump is a businessman, not a politician. Let's not treat foreigners as though they think like us. They do not. It requires thinking outside the box, something few politicians do but Trump does well. Let's support our businessman President who's starting us off in the right direction. The 'next administration' is spinning their wheels trying to impeach him.
10
@Daphne But they will abandon this policy. Current political climate in the US has no room for longer term policy making than 4 years out the length of a POTUS term.
The only reason Trump can get away with what he's doing is
get ready for it....He just doesn't care if he ends up back at his gilded tower in Manhattan. He promised himself 40 years ago if he ever became POTUS he would do what he could to save America and that would have to be enough.
7
@Daphne
Hear Hear. I like to make lemonade out of the lemons I am dealt. This is one case where I am somewhat happy that the apple-cart is being upset. Not sure I agree with the exact tactics being used, but this imbalance does need to be addressed.
But I do long for the day when we have a different president.
13
While people decry the fact that China is flooding the American market with cheap goods ( the plastic toys Friedman mentions- and I would add, cheap clothing and shoes -we in Maine have lost most of our once-thriving shoe industry) China is blamed, the American consumer is blamed for buying these goods (often there were no choices), and the various American administrations blamed for being too accepting of China as an equal player when it wasn't. Most analyses gloss over a crucial fact: corporations voluntarily moved their plants from the US to China decades ago to make ever larger profits by paying ridiculously low wages instead of the living wages they paid Americans,with benefits. Corporate greed for ballooning profits made the rich richer and the middle class in America poorer. Of course the Chinese took this opportunity to enrich and build their own middle class but they were handed the tools by American corporations (and multi-national corporations) who profited greatly by cutting labor costs and side-steppng pesky environmental laws -and ignoring human-rights issues. By having more and more of our products "made in China" (including the products sold by the Trump family's companies) the Chinese economy surged and helped to create the situation we are now in. I agree we need to take a stronger stance but it is also important to remember that it is bottom-line capitalists - and business-friendly laws that ignore the domestic consequences, who have been the enablers.
1070
@susan
You are right, unfortunately that is how capitalism works. If the US had tried to protect the local shoe industry, then other countries would have tried to protect their auto industry or some other industry that protects their workers. A lot of the wealth the US acquired is through selling superior finished good in technology and other technology dependent industries. Capitalism is like water it flows towards cheap labor, low taxes and yes places with minimal regulation and standards. That is why the WTO is in place to make sure all countries follow the rules of trade and don't unfairly take advantage by bypassing worker protection and environmental regulation. However China, has figured out a way to game the WTO and has been doing it for the past couple of decades and no one had the guts to hold them accountable. Regardless of my distaste for Trump, if he takes on China and does not cave in to them, I will consider his presidency a success. As much as I like Biden to win, I worry, based on his comments that China is not a threat.
28
@susan yes it was about profits. but it was also about competition. if those Maine plants were not moved where labor was cheaper they would not be in business.
11
Yes, both corporate greed, and consumer interest in saving a buck have put us in this situation: How are we going to get out of this? I can say there is not much is NOT going to be much change for a long time until we are just a hot arid planet resembling something like the planet(s) that we are trying to study some more (Mars, moon.... whatever, wherever.... ), to find out what and where our planet came from, (and most likely) is going. What a conundrum!
11
What was funny about the TPP is that experts concluded the US was the big winner. 250 billions added to your economy. Now, working class families will spend $800 more per year for the usual stuff.
Instead of working with natural allies to confront China and change some rules and tariffs over a long period to avoid shocking the system, your government has decided to attack.
Attack is not always the best defense.
4
With Trump heading this trade war - so easy to win - "values matter, differences in values matters, a modicum of trust matters and the rule of law matters." Ha that's joke. None of that matters to Trump.
2
I guess what bothers me is that this administration does not speak with one tongue and I think that makes it even more difficult to reach a satisfactory agreement. Knowledge hates a vacuum and when we look back 15 from now and see what changes arrived from this circuitous development we will understand but we may not like it. There are no secrets where knowledge is concerned. Many of the things that we are kept from, we develope in another way. There is no question in my mind that as a country we will be poorer because of the government of this administration.
1
I suggest the American public is to blame for much of this. Decades ago shoppers made the decision to purchase hundreds of items from China, or Japan, because they cost less. Just one example, sheets, made in the Carolinas. Good quality, just a little more expensive. But to save a buck or two we purchased them from China, putting Americans out of work. We are responsible for much of this with that same attitude prevailing today.
1
China is one of several existential threats facing western civilization right now. Trump's hard line is appreciated although I fear even he is not going hard enough.
Our European "allies" and even countries threatened directly threatened by China refuse to take harder lines. Thankfully Australia has seen the light. Everywhere you look. Chinese money, state-sponsored corruption, and intimidation play direct roles in China-related policy.
Even in this comments section, there are people allegedly from the USA defending China.
China's has raised generations on anti-American, anti-western propaganda. Nationalism runs hot in the country and these generations will be its leaders soon.
China has also stolen critical weapon systems information putting them decades ahead of where they would be. China steals valuable IP by outright hacking, sending students to US universities and by every method in-between.
Chinese state-sponsored media regularly threatens military confrontation with the US.
Thirty years after the Soviet Union fell we again face another great power competition. Although this time with much, much weaker leaders and allies.
China should never have been allowed not to play by the "rules" on trade. Furthermore, the US should not be trading with and empowering non-allied nations.
Nievate has been a hallmark of US policy since the end of Vietnam and it has cost us. Strong anti-foreign influence laws are needed and we should prepare for another cold war.
1
I'm not sure the wrecking ball is worth it. Yes, Trump is "teaching China a lesson," if that's what you want to call it, but by wrecking the world's two largest economies. He has cost American farmers their biggest export market, hurt automakers and other industries using steel, aluminum and Chinese-made components; spurred inflation by raising the cost of Chinese-made goods; and destroyed all the rulebooks for resolving disputes in global trade. The IMF estimates that tariffs of 25% on all trade between China and the U.S. will knock 0.3-0.6% off America's GDP and 0.5-1.5% off China's.
3
"China kept insisting it was still “a poor developing country” that needed extra protection long after it had become the world’s largest manufacturer by far. Nevertheless, the relationship worked for enough U.S. companies enough of the time that the world’s biggest incumbent superpower, America, accommodated and effectively facilitated the rise of the world’s next largest superpower, China."
Of course this relationship worked for the U.S. - our companies were making obscene profits at the expense of American jobs. American companies (and the U.S. government) were never going to complain about the trade relationship with China, because it meant huge profits for the companies and high returns for shareholders.
@BK: China is the world's largest single domestic market. After manufacturing for that, what it exports is far down the cost curve of economies of scale.
I am of the opinion, Trump doesn't heed unsolicited advice. If he didn't ask for your opinion, he doesn't need to hear it.
That works for me.
1
I agree with Yuri Asian. There is definitely racism involved in this argument when there is anger when we buy a lot of Asian goods but no problem with BMW's etc.
Either you manage trade at the government level like former Soviet Union or you let free trade between willing participants.
We subsidize our industries a lot. Govt funded R&D helped silicon valley, aerospace etc. So why blame the Chinese
This article fails to understand the economics of free trade.An earlier article by Paul Krugman captured the essence of trade from an economic perspective very well.
In summary this article is flaming the passions of people based on nationality and race. It could be an analysis of our social and political climate but it is not an economic analysis , No where does he show the benefit to our employment picture which is very good anyway right now. Our profits are at an all time high !! So where is the beef ??
6
You've heard the expression "even a blind squirrel eventually finds a nut"? That explains Trump, with his one speed, one playbook approach to battling against any one or anything that tries to defy him. Eventually, after wrecking the FBI, Congress, racial harmony, religious tolerance, the immigration system, and trying to destroy health care, he took on China, a cause that most of us would say at least is coherent. He found a nut.
593
@Steve Holding a nut, he grabs his phone and frantically tweets - dropping the nut. And...somebody brings him a hamburger and there is golf...I am always so amazed at our capacity to project a modicum of presidential behavior onto a man so utterly incapable. There have been so many columns like this since his Presidency, pouncing on a flicker, but he can't.
54
@Steve
Maybe, but the blind squirrel will find the nut. As opposed to a fully aware Obama type who prefers eloquent speeches but doesn't want the mess of actually having to look and do something about it.
10
@Steve And for the wrong reason - he sees the trade deficit as a crisis when it's little more than a statistic.
5
In the mean time we the American people suffer and endure increased cost due to tariffs. Let's not forget it is the American CEO, in the search for greater profits and bonus that transferred manufacturing and technology to China. It was their greed that prompted this mess. Let's don't forget where the true fault lies.
518
@TM
I don’t see anyone suffering and eduring tariffs in the US and I am not a from this country. In fact prices here are ridiculously cheap compared to anywhere else and a little higher prices in the short term for a multi decade boost is a very rational thing.
22
@Vik S: Rents, education, the minimum wage and health insurance are ridiculously expensive here compared to anywhere else, so that leaves ridiculously little for life’s necessities like food, clothes and utilities. You also seem to forget that prices here don’t include taxes and tips, ranging from 6 to 20% added to any shop, restaurant or other service bill.
27
@TM - yes it is the ceo - driven purely by shareholders just like you and me. so really tm, it's the collective greed of america that's driving the ceo's decision. own any equities tm? you're just as guilty.
2
I will agree that China needed to be confronted on its trade policies (it needs to be confronted on its political policies as well, but there's a lot less stomach for that in the world because of those pesky atomic missiles--that would need to start internally).
But Orange is not the guy to be confronting them, even if he gets some credit for barreling at the issue. That's because the Chinese and everyone else know that Trump really has no concern about the well being of American citizens or any others in the world as a result of Chinese practices--it's all about how those practices affect him and his cronies and their businesses, meaning Trump could be distracted and bought off by the first shiny object he's offered--like a Trump tower in Beijing, as some of have suggested.
There were other mechanisms to address trade policy problems that other politicians suggested could be used (TPP among them); there are still candidates out there (Sanders, Warren) who recognize said problems and would also confront China. But they would much more likely do it multilaterally, recognize the complicity of our own oligarchs' profit-aggrandizing in empowering China at the expense of American workers and consumers, and be far less likely to trade concessions for a personal emolument.
6
@Glenn Ribotsky: Trump is an extreme present hedonist trying to deal with a culture evolved over 5000 years.
1
American companies saw cheap skilled labor and took advantage of it with little to no hesitation. Great for short term profits, but it cost them their trade intelligence and the USA, jobs.
It is not China that should be punished but rather American companies who were all too short-sighted. We should limit the number of goods allowed into this country with common sense rules of engagement and quotas that penalize companies who freely offer their intellectual property, knowing full well that China will copy or even improve it.
To punish China for our mistakes will not solve our problem of living for quarterly profits rather than long-term planning to build our own strong domestic economy!
10
@Barney Feinberg: You can take the factory out of the country, but the trade secrets it implements will go with it.
As always, Mr. Friedman precisely presents the problem, but he left one aspect out. The real reason this problem exists is that American companies were guided by GREED rather than sound business principles. In their quest for infinite growth and ever fatter profit margins they have decimated our domestic manufacturing and caused millions of Americans to be under-employed or live in poverty. Greed aided by a government that exists primarily to serve the interests of those who finance their re-elections is the real problem. Let’s remember, China didn’t force Apple, or Boeing, or any other company to move their manufacturing operations there, instead these companies were eager to access the cheap labor markets of China to extract even more profits for their shareholders and pay astronomical compensation to their management. The problem is not China and its trade policy, the problem is Greed and a government that is no longer serving the interests of its citizens.
9
Inflation in this country has largely held in check over the past three decades by two opposite forces:
Electronic components largely come from Asia, and oil/gas largely come from deposits in and off-shore this continent.
I can’t imagine what our smart phones and laptops would cost if all their electronics were manufactured here, or what prices of oil and gas would be if Aramco was still in control.
Maybe I’m a product of the 1970s and it’s excruciating oil embargoes, but I think it’s imperative that we do not substantially rely on any one country or cartel for anything.
Maybe someone should look into building manufacturing facilities for chips and circuit boards in Mexico. I hear that there are some very smart people there.
5
The problems with the whole "lets get it right now" argument is that (1) China has always taken a long view with what they do and long does not mean just a few years, it can mean generations for them, (2) when it comes to business America only knows how to operate quarter to quarter to appease Wall Street and big investors, (3) no Chinese leader is going to allow themselves to appear to have compromised or given up anything to the US or the rest of the world and their long view as well as willingness to have their people suffer for the long view makes that possible, and (4) US leaders live for one thing - to win the next election. For Trump that means puffing out his chest, tell the world "look how I made China give in" or "we will never compromise with China" so that when he is running for reelection he can boast as to how he is the only leader willing to stand up to China and that it is good for America. This is a game of chicken where no one is going to turn away because each side has too much to lose on a personal level if they do. Reminds me of Dr. Seuss's "Butter Battle" but on an economic level.
9
China certainly needs to be managed in the pursuit of US interests. But this trade war -- indeed any direct confrontation -- is unnecessary and undesirable. Far from China "deserving" Trump, the truth here is the opposite: Trump deserves China, which, if treated as an enemy, will grind him up.
3
From 1987 to 1995 I negotiated contracts for the sale of Boeing commercial aircraft to China. Your article is spot on. It took a while for me to recognize and appreciate the techniques one needs to do business in China. Regretfully, 45 and his administration lack any of the attributes necessary to address the growing problem of our trade relationship with China. For starters I recommend they begin with a reading of The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
9
It matters how you do this. China is still handled as a developing country in the WTO. Everyone expected that to be renegotiated.
Trump instead decided he wanted an exclusive deal with China that left everyone else out. In so doing he reduced our leverage to less than half—something the Chinese understand perfectly.. He also decided that he was going to make it all about the power of US protectionism, not about global rules for commerce.
The battle we’re fighting is explicitly for a fractured world with diminished US power. If we want to reach the goals at the end of the Friedman article, we should be in the right fight.
4
Mr. Friedman is so naïve to think that we let China taking advantages of us over the years. In fact, our companies all profit skyrocketing a great deal by setting up supply chain and moving manufacturing to overseas. We are so clever that we still keep and control the key components in the supply chain and give them the generated-in-thin-air money (credit). In the end, we are so rich and become lazy. We thus use products we don't make and spend money we don't have. But we do enjoy the high standard of living which we can no longer afford. This trade war is a good wake-up call for us to rejuvenate our education, infrastructure, research and development. However, no instant gratitude will be evident.
1
It's amazing that 45 has bent over backwards to appease Russia as it's "so much better to be friends than enemies," while being so antagonistic to China. Not, as Friedman points out, that China hasn't long deserved some solid push-back from the US, as well as the rest of the industrialized world, but rather that we have an opportunity to partner with China and through industrial cooperation dominate the global market in technology. Of course that could only happen if China were to play fair with the US--the secret in such an alliance would be in emphasizing how much market dominance the two superpowers might achieve if they could operate symbiotically.
@Al
The Trump Administration has been harder on Russia than Obama's. This notion that he is "appeasing" Russia stems from the fact that he won't utter the exact words demanded by his critics. In other words, he doesn't ask, "How high?" when they demand that he, "Jump!" They despise him for disregarding them.
1
A very western hemisphere view of the world. In reading this article, one would think that Western Governments operate altruistically and maintain the security and privacy rights of their citizens above all else.
In reality that is far from the truth. The US approved the Patriot Act in 2001 to "legally" allow increased access to information & communication systems suspected of being used for terrorist activity and yet the definition of terrorist activity is remarkably loose. Don't think for a minute that the US intelligence agencies are not contemplating or even acting on security issues with Qualcomm and the like, the way they claim that the Chinese act with Huawei. It is the height of arrogance for the US Government to take high moral ground here, given their history of counter-intelligence forays into regime change around the world.
Likewise, no-one held a gun to the Western organisations push into China over the past 40 years. While they whinge and moan about IP theft, they could have easily stayed put or moved to other countries, albeit more expensive, than China. The decision parameter was that the increased profits far outweighed the loss of any IP. "Stole" is a big word to be used here - everyone was guilty of jumping on the cheap Chinese labour wagon and private organisations and governments have profited immensely as a result. It is only now that the consequences of those profit decisions is being felt around the world.
767
@Jp
How is it “stealing” when you voluntarily disclose proprietary knowledge and you know going in that the price you pay, as a company, for doing business in China, is to share this IP? And when you know from the start that there is zero legal protection from having the knowledge you shared with company A being distributed to whoever else the Chinese government requires them to?
I’m not suggesting that it's fair or right. But every CEO and board that authorized going into China knew exactly what they signed up for - big profits, big bonuses, huge golden parachute packages.
They cared nothing for the US workers who lost jobs, the environmental damage created by shipping all the trinkets across the world, or the terrible conditions in China - of everyone in general, with no possibility of dissent in a dictatorship, or the living conditions of their own workers in particular.
So yeah, David is right. No one held a gun to their heads. They put their heads in the lion’s mouth (or perhaps more accurately the dragon’s) seduced by the promise of obscene profits to the detriment of everything else. These are the bitter fruits of that decision, but still not for companies. I hear stocks are doing great:-)
97
@David B. Seems to me that when US companies chose to enter the Chinese production field they were doing exactly what Khruschev said years ago: that the West would hang itself on its own rope. Unless there are laws preventing this, capitalism must go where it produces the biggest bang for the buck (profit). That is its strength and its greatest weakness. China simply used it to grow its own economy, which is to their credit. We were warned about this and our economics guys chose to ignore the warning!
27
@Beatrice Lawson
The "stealing" has been through Chinese Army hackers breaking into the computers of US corporations and using that information to gain years of incredibly expensive R&D work.
10
We're already the poorer for it, Mr. Friedman. All those "sneakers" jobs were once done by honest, hard-working Americans - people who did their best, played by the rules, and had bosses who paid them decently, gave them benefits, maybe even a pension. Now - well, now, it seems to be a race to the bottom. And the working and middle classes - seeing their modest stakes evaporating - are all the poorer for it. So much for globalization - helping the rich but turning the rest into paupers and serfs. We need an FDR-like correction, and soon.
1169
@Ellen
Most of this is accurate. I worked and evaluated deplorables for umpteen years, but Ellen, FDR could not get us out of the great Depression. It was WWII that did it, you know the "Big One,"
23
@Ellen
I agree. Instead of American Industry making better products in styling, quality, and price, it's main objective has been to buy or make many things oversees just to go after bigger net profits. This continuing strategy is not going to work anymore!
57
@Ellen I too am tired of the cavalier “you can make this type of cheap stuff anywhere or by robots, so who cares” type of argument people like Friedman throw around. We can’t all be doctors, or financial analysts or even work in call centers. We need a variety of fair-paying jobs in this country for people of all walks of life.
47
China 2020 = Japan 1989
Rapid growth always hides crimes and corruption, as China's growth starts to slow, we will find that central gov't planning of industry in China(2020) is no better than central gov't control of planning Japan(1989).
1
I take issue with the fact that as long as China was just stealing factories that made sneakers and toys, it was all fine, but now that it threatens our so-called “best companies,” we’ve got to do something.
Those factories that made toys and sneakers hired Americans who were proud of the jobs they did. When did it become that you and your job has zero value unless you work in tech?
I was recently in Asia and to see the way the young in many countries I visited are so hopeful about the future and confident of their place in the world was really unexpected. Our young people in America mostly seem angry and lost. I guess the kids in Asia know they’ll have jobs that pay a living wage.
5
Trump, in all his 'wisdom' ended any hopes for our participation in PTP which would have had the United States participating with some of the countries that could have provided some of the products we now buy from China. If the trade war does go on we'll have to seek other Asian markets. It will be difficult because they know what and unreliable trading partner we've become.
Trump's hamfisted handling of China has left thousands of American farmers who depended on selling their products to China in a precarious position. Will they be dependent on farm subsidy handouts to merely survive?
This is why in the past tariff policy was left both to the Congress and the executive, but the feckless Republican majority allowed Trump the national security dodge to become our trade czar.
6
@Michael Kelly: China probably has agents buying up distressed farmland in the US right now as its farmers fold.
1
There seems to be an accepted idea here that the Chinese stole our technology by forcing the sharing of said technology. Does that even make sense?
In addition, the Chinese appropriation of "technology" is a leg up, but not a leg past us. Our old technology (all technology is old the day it becomes a product or service) isn't the keys to the kingdom...unless were no longer developing new technology.
The fact that we fear China empowered with our old tech should worry us for a far more important reason than a "trade imbalance". It implies we no longer believe we can stay ahead of them.
That worries me...
4
@Mark Renfrow: Trade secrets are the most substantive intellectual property in manufacturing. They are integral with factories and go wherever the factory is relocated.
1
@Mark Renfrow We can never deny the developnment of China over the several decades, but it's just very common.
Nicely written, in a storm of articles telling us that China is not cheating, that they are playing fair, that they are creating new technologies themselves and competing, Friedman finally is one voice saying hold on, there is truth to what Trump is saying. For all the talk of a China that is innovating, it isn't, Chinese R and D is often based on stealing the technology of other countries, the hacking we see by the Chinese military is to a large extent about industrial espionage. And yes, companies like Google and Amazon cannot operate in China, nor can Cisco, yet the Chinese expect full access for alibaba and Huewei. One of the things most commentators are avoiding saying is that the Chinese government's vision is not a global world where they compete, but a global world where as the Middle Kingdom they basically set the standard for everything, and I am not just talking commerce or products, they want a world they feel comfortable with, a world that mirrors their own internal idea of how things should work. They don't just want Google to censor searches in China, in other words, they want to find a way to control the internet itself, to have it 'self censor' to meet their vision of control, and that is dangerous.
5
What concerns me about our current administration is not trade and commerce, but war. Mr. Trump and his administrators have no experience and little interest in the fine art of diplomacy. His silly tweets and heavy handed approach may work very well in the business world, but could drag us into adversarial positions that demand physical force, i.e. war. Fighting China is not a future I would wish on the world, but Trump may be leading us there. Are our children's live less valuable than a better trading position?
4
Huawei is a security risk?
Miss The NYTimes column yesterday by Charlie Warzel and Sarah Jeong on the global internet threat we face because Intel chips, ubiquitous in the digital world, have a flaw that allows hackers to break in? Ditto Cisco routers -- the digital switches that drive the internet -- have a similar flaw that's a portal for malefactors to take control of nuclear power plants, oil refineries, electrical grids, aviation and navigation systems, etc.
But it's only Huawei we should single out?
Many computer experts believe the internet -- chaotically put together, weak, aging infrastructure, bad or no planning, evolving standards, incompatible systems -- is inherently vulnerable and will never be 100% secure from malfeasance.
In other words, the Chinese don't need backdoor entry via Huawei 5G networks to hack into anything they want -- just as we don't.
Experts also make the point that network security is mostly competent and diligent administration of networks and maintaining vigilance. It's generally not hardware that creates risk.
Right now Huawei is considered by many as part of the leading edge of 5G networks. Their biggest competitors are Nokia and Ericsson Also, Chinese companies led by Huawei and sister telecom ZTE own 36% of all essential 1,000+ 5G patents.
If Huawei is blacklisted by the US, their patents won't be available, likely delaying any 5G build out.
How do you say "Penny-wise and pound foolish" in Mandarin?
11
China destroyed US solar panel manufacturing in the last 15 years by cheating, stealing, lying and bribing (looking at you, Solar Energy Industry Association)... add to that an authoritarian government which has imprisoned or outright killed dissidents since Tiananmen and earlier and only NOW does Mr. Friedman believe the’ve gone too far? Where have you been the last 30 years while US business has sold its soul to China for quarterly profits at the future expense of every American under the age of 40?
5
Our president would win more praise and support in all parts of China if he took the time to learn some basic SPOKEN Chinese. If what he says about his intellect is true, it should be quite easy for him, especially since spoken Chinese is quite easy to learn and to use (although written Chinese is a bear.) If he has the stamina to study one hour a day, he should be able to say "I am an American, and we Americans are your friends, not your enemies" (in Chinese) within a couple of weeks. Although I'm not a supporter of his, I have been a certified teacher of Chinese for about fifty years, and I'm sure that even he could learn to speak Chinese.
Having hundreds of atomic bombs doesn't help you make friends, but being able to speak face to face can make an enemy into a friend. We need as many friends as we can get. Most Chinese people like America, and learning to speak their language says "we are your friends". Who doesn't need friends?
CEOs are paying themselves 400 times some of their employees, China is to blame?
The US is squandering it’s money on foreign wars, China is to blame?
The US refuses to invest more in education, but can afford more tax cuts for the wealthy while students drown in debt, China is to blame?
US companies outsourced their manufacturing to make more profit and left a rust belt the breadth of the country, China is to blame, not the greedy corporations, broken government and Wall Street?
The US congress refuses to increase the minimum wage yet productivity has increased and the minimum wage isn’t worth what it was years ago, China is to blame?
Why should the public care about China when even the things the US could do itself are not done? Is it the Chinese stopping the above initiatives?
Why should the public care about China when companies are making huge profits, yet CEOs pay themselves extremely disproportionally better than most of their workers who are also taxed more?
China this China that, is it really China, or is the real culprit in fact right here in the US itself: broken and unresponsive government and politics?
To me, this whole “China” hullabaloo doesn’t add up.
8
@Frea makes good points, I believe. The U.S. has been significantly undercut by its own greed and short-sightedness. And if the Republicans lose their grip on these policies, perhaps they can be corrected to fairer and more reasonable policies. That said, Frea's reference to the "'China' hullabaloo" being largely irrelevant misses an essential corrective measure in stabilizing world economic/political balance. China and the U.S. must compete fairly, necessitating China's internal revisions, so that the world can benefit from both energies.
1
It's easy to break things. . .putting it back together is another story.
Frontline ran an episode on US-China trade within the past two weeks. One element of that broadcast stood out. It was American businesses or their lobbyists, who complained about Chinese trade behavior one one hand, but requested that Washington go easy with Beijing, less China make things even more difficult for American businesses.
What trump has done is merely flip the table over. . .any fool can do that.
1
Normalization. Because Trump is still president, Friedman (and lots of other mainstream pundits) start to give him at least partial credit for whatever is happening. This is to ignore how much better things could be of the previous two years hadn't been wasted, with major damage in fact being done by the unleashed Republicans, and Trump with his personal demagoguery. But Friedman likes to find something quirky and counter-intuitive to say...
1
This is all a big con job, cooked up by 1%ers from both countries to raise consumer prices worldwide, once they go up prices never retreat even when the tariffs are gone. Think about it.
1
At these levels trade is a zero-sum game.
Mr. Friedman,
Thank you for your “wise” article in display.
They may wish to exalt their history of economic knowledge but in my opinion, the Western Civilization attained the vastly “superior” economic knowledge than anything Chinese did. To anyone who arrogantly states the advantage of Chinese Communism economy, please do not compare the Chinese trade practicing culture of the past to the likes of the Western civilization that flourished and attained the kind of free trading practices we see today - from Phoenicians of 2000 years BC who ventured across multi-cultural nations of Mediterranean sea to a million citizens of ancient Rome, many of whom rose from the slave status to become free and rich merchants through trading wheats with Egypt and beyond, - to the wisdom of the Jews who practiced and perfected their trading knowledge among many, many cultures in Europe sometimes through persecution. Each nation has her own wisdom to be proud of, but please do not compare what Western Civilization accomplished for its economic knowledge to the Chinese facsimile. Donald Trump with all his faults (and believe me, I am a bleeding-heart liberal) and you, Mr. Friedman, are to me the best examples of what Western Civilization should be proud of, because we are so much more diverse and therefore far greatly stronger than any economic theoretician has predicted in the past. So, please give them and us a little of respect deservingly.
Membership in the WTO is still the best way to manage trade with China. When China dumps product, we file a case at the WTO and we win about 80% of the time. Damages are collected. This is far more effective than watch Trump, our Baby Huey, jump into the middle of things that he knows nothing about.
2
It’s the American people who need to wake up and step up to the plate. New companies must replace the old greedy ones who are guilty of bringing US to this point. We need American entrepreneurs who are unafraid to take bold steps and manufacture goods here. And Americans who have enough sense to realize that saving a nickel is not as important as saving the country. There was a time we produced everything, now shamefully one can not even by a coffee pot made in America. Shame on the greedy and self centered. This is our turning point. Our fork in the road. One path leads to America and the other to China. Choose wisely.
4
Is anything stranger than the political parties and their media outlets accusing each other of being partisan?
That’s the strongest indicator of the complete lack of intelligence, credibility and morality.
Let’s remember, Trump is an outsider. How was he able to defeat BOTH PARTIES and get elected?
Is that his fault too?
He is more similar to all of us than we understand.
He wants the reckless tax cuts for his corporations. We want free health care, child care, education and universities. We consider that to be the human rights.
We are forgetting the crucially important fact. There are no rights without the obligations. The more rights we are demanding, the more obligations we are saddling ourselves with.
That’s what we share with Mr. Trump.
Everybody wants the perks and benefits paid by somebody else, in our specific case by the national debt and the future generations.
We all are the members of the Trump team and his casino gambling business built between the Atlantic and the Pacific shores.
We believe that the bills don’t have to be paid and that our national credit card has no limits.
We are doomed for the extremely harsh and sobering landing. The very moment we get ultimately pampered and spoiled something will wake us up!
China or India, that’s completely irrelevant...
The columnist today is informative and
constructive.
Both leaders and both nations ought to be
maximally aware and to swallow pretense.
Our mutuality of well being supersedes
egoism
We're okay, China is ok by way of win-win.
Recession/depression is lose-lose.
Negotiate and compromise, please.
Distribute TF's candid plea to everyone,
because we must remain friendly and
honest above egoism.
1
I can't disagree on the economics, but I am fearful of the fate of the US.
Trump punches everyone in the nose, just to get their attention. Then he punches them again, and punches Iran, and Venezuela, Germany, and France but not Russia.
He makes America small.
And when he gets us into a war to insure his reelection, Russia and China will join forces to oppose us. The Europeans will decline, respectfully, and America will add billions more to the already nuclear explosive deficit, and find itself in another unwinnable position.
Then he takes complete control.
3
Talk about burying the lede... "All of this is now coming to a head in these trade talks. Either the U.S. and China find a way to build greater trust — so globalization can continue apace and we can grow together in this new era — or they won’t. In which case, globalization will start to fracture, and we’ll both be poorer for it."
Friedman can make China the boogeyman, but in a globalized economy, there are no winners or losers. China is willing to negotiate on a peer level about intellectual property and trade rules, but this is best handled multilaterally through the UN or WTO, not by Trump's bullying and obvious racism. How Trump treats China is how Trump will treat any other nation and you can be sure the rest of the world is taking notice. This will not end well and the U.S. has shot itself in the wallet.
1
thanks to Trump, China doesn't even need to hide it's goal. they can cheat and become a more authoritarian state in plain sight. thanks to Trump, China can now do wherever they want without any justification except Trump and America.
China's plans will be boosted by Trump's reckless policies.
yes, Trump got their attention. just to move faster and harder.
1
US governing elite is still focused on the crises of immediate WWII time period, and acting as though we still have the economic power to set the rules. Chinese theft, that's right, absolute theft, of an enormous amount of intellectual property--from the Lockheed Martin fighter to Caterpillar D9 tractors--is totally unacceptable. As Friedman recognizes it is time for our attitude to change and nobody seems willing to do it except Trump. The only tool we have is a hammer and it is time to bang away.
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Agree with Friedman occasionally and this is one instance. As he points out using the example of the F-35 China has no compunction about stealing our technology and obviating the need for R&D. In addition, since Huawei is subject to control by the Chinese government it is almost suicidal to think that it won't use it surreptitiously for defense and economic espionage.
If we have to bite the economic bullet for national security, so be it.
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Wow. What happened to all that communist propaganda of the 1950s through the 1980s? The Red Scare, McCarthyism, communism domino theory, commies are going to kill us in our beds, and "those who believe in freedom". How did China "force" American companies to transfer their intellectual property technology to China? Did China put a gun to American companies and say, sign on the dotted line or else?
The United States got played by China, real talk. United States corporations saw, non-union, lax regulations of every kind, and very-cheap labor. What better way to neutralize The New Deal, move US manufacturing over seas. Greed, hubris, ignorance, and delusions of grandeur has a way of clouding ones thinking: The United States thought they were playing chess... only to realize America has been playing hangman.
I'm amused when I read about the US and Europeans whining about others not playing by the rules. What rules would that be, sir? The US and Europe have always played by rules that benefited their interest, if they needed to lie, kill, or steal so be it.
Our economic trouble started long before China emerged. Japan whipped this nation economical... crushed US car, steel, and electronic industries.
Who owns a significant percentage of our debt?
China.
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Let me give you two perspectives. First a Swedish perspective. Besides IKEA the two best known Swedish companies are Volvo and Ericsson. Volvo was on global scale too small to survive alone. First it was baught by Ford (USA), then it was taken over of Geely (China). There is no doubt that the Chinese owner has been a better partner for Volvo. Second, when it comes to Ericsson, it had a strong position at the advent of mobile telecommunication. The competion was however fierce, with names like Siemens, Alcatel, Lucent, Nokia, plus four Japanese companies and others. One by one they withdraw from the mobil system market. But when Ericsson´s position became stronger and stronger, a new Company, Huawei, entered the market. The fact that Huawei succeded where other traditionally very strong technology companies failed is impressive. And the explanation can not be only foul play.
The second perspective is Control of Citizens. It is to a great extent a matter of technology. What we fear Huawei will do, we know US companies are already doing. Think of Facebook, Google and Apple and what they are capable of. And not long ago Angela Merkel´s telephone was tapped by americans.
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What a terrific explanation of the situation.
And, as much as I hate to say it, parts of what Trump is doing makes sense.
Ouch. That hurt.
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This article reads like a version of distilled Eurocentric World History. There is nothing in this article that European nations/America haven’t done to a neighbor or colony during the last five hundred years. It seems China is mimicking our history and replaying it on fast forward.
China has visions of its future and is acting aggressively to achieve those goals, but America keeps electing representatives who are STEM ignorant, refuse facts and data, and rule by ideology. America lost this power struggle long ago.
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Ah yes, once again we see how All-Stick-and-No-Carrot Trump represents danger. TPP might have been successful in curbing China's domination urge without our having to resort to a destructive, disruptive trade war. But as it was intended to operate through intelligent cooperation rather than macho confrontation, and especially as it was negotiated under Obama, that would not have been the red meat the Trump base feeds on. And we thus hurtle headlong into the abyss, just as we are doing in the Middle East. Trouble ahead doesn't begin it.
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now and then, we should care. buying tennis shoes was enabled and supported a dictatorial government that violates basic human rights. now their new tools are beyond our control and we are buying them... sci-fi isn't ever this frightening.
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China is not going to change for us because the Communist Party won’t change. Let’s be poorer if it means stopping stripping the planet of all the resources. Let’s be poorer in material goods! Let’s suffer a little so our cultures and our Planet can ‘rebalance’ away from consumption and change for its own sake. A well ordered society needs to take care of itself — and follow its best values. Let’s draw some lines and stop pretending it’s always Win Win.
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Western businesses willingly gave away their trade secrets in pursuit of of the almighty profit for their shareholders so now its the problem of all US workers.
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Huawei phones aren’t protected in Mainland China. OPPO is the largest handy manufacturer in China not Huawei. Although Huawei has a competitor ZTE(And ZTE is trudelt owned by the government,whereas Huawei not), ZTE is too weak to compete with Huawei.
If you want to get China’s attention, stop admitting them to cal-tech. Stop admitting them to Stanford. Stop letting them buy up California. Stop allowing the unfettered technology transfers and intellectual property theft taking place at these institutions. The Chinese have no respect as the Russians have no respect. So why do we enable this behavior?
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From a Canadian’s point of view, China is starting to show it’s true Colors.
They are coercive, bullying, authoritarian.
It’s one thing when they mistreat their citizens. But now, somehow, they think they can mistreat Canadians.
I say, let’s deal with them now....They don’t get it! It’s inevitable.
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Oh the waste thrown away at our landfill sights, the plastic in our fish, the high pollution in our air, the addiction of buying cheap stuff its all part of a China growth. We really don’t need about two thirds of this junk but because we get bored easily we turn on home shopping and buy, we look at a magazine and think oh how pretty and buy, we have been duped by this cheap stuff, cents on the dollar. You don’t hear anything negative about touching all this plastic that Home Depot, Lowe’s, Dollar, toys r Us sells to name a few. We are guilty and should be boycotting thank you for article
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Mr Friedman... it wasn't so long ago that you were extolling the virtues of the Chinese system, and it's ability to get things done. I can't remember the exact words, but something like " if only we could be China for a month ". What happened, " The World Is Flat " has become rather lumpy and rocky?
The NSA tapped Merkel's phone. Should Germany ban American IT services?
I do get the non-equivalence of values between the US and China. This is precisely why I'm worried about how little regard US representatives - including the current president - can show for them. How can the liberal order stand its ground in the face of authoritarian success, if its own leaders are eager to turn their back on it?
From the outside, the trustworthiness of the US as a liberal leader is not a given. Trump seems to actively deny and refuse this role. Public admiration of Kim Jong-un and gloating over Saudi deals despite the Yemen catastrophe are only the tip of an increasingly ugly iceberg. If the president is proud to be just another playground bully, how is the world supposed to be won over for human rights and liberty? As a non-American, I'm convinced the world needs true American values more than ever.
The ultimate goal should be to renovate the house. Destroyng it with a wreaking ball does not seem to be very productive.
And why would not China say that no one tells them what to do, and why would it be an untolarable bluster?
Isn't exactly what the US President has been doing now for years all over the world? No need to quote, there would be too many exemples.
And why poor, naive american companies "were made to transfer technology transfers". Did they have a gun to their heads or were they looking for immediate profits?
And why have we not pursued more actively the WTA way, and that now Trumps hase decided to leave it?
And why this "China cannot afford shifting the US and Other Countries to ABC?
Why would Other Countries follow blindly Trump's ways.
Arn't they too, entitled to My Country FIRST?
And should they choose, "my aim is not for all to gain, but for all others to loose, even if I loose myself?"
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I'm still not sure how we continue to be so complicit in the great crimes against humanity that China commits. We the People are addicted to the cheap products made by the compliant comrades of low-wage, caged life, while the few get extremely wealthy. No freedoms needed if we get the affordable goods. No moral compass here.
Cuba's bad but China's good? Wow, that's an easy read. Americans are too self-centered, greedy, uncaring of the 'other'. We are capitalists, first and foremost.
China? We use any country we can, for anything we can get. The reckoning comes on the shoulders of ecological destruction and grotesque inequality. We've created it all.
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Always tackle the worst problem first!
Trump is not our national problem. He isn’t a problem at all. If a single individual could hamper more than 300 million people, something is wrong with such a nation!
All our problems have predated Trump. That’s why he got elected!
What is our real emergency? China?! Not really, not at all!
Our worst threat is our extremely dangerous gambling addiction.
We are betting year after year that our national credit card has no limits. That’s is extremely reckless and risky position.
Every credit line has its limit. We don’t know it specifically but make the plans for the future based on premise that it doesn’t exist and demand ever-growing perks and benefits from a society.
If we learn too late what the specific limits are, we might lose all the chips we put in!
Wow! What a well-written and concise article. Exactly what I expect from Thomas Friedman. This is why I subscribe to the NYT and carry on a family tradition.
With respect,Mr.Friedman, your opening paragraph is akin to the beginning of a fairy tale. Come back to reality !
Do we really believe that Trump will be able to stop his juvenile Twitter taunts to China? Or to anyone else who doesn't admire him? Is the man even capable of forging anything quietly and with restraint? Or of or rebalancing anything?
Trump has no self awareness.
I wholeheartedly agree with S B's comment below :Trump does not understand what he is doing and usually acts out of spite.
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Finally - a credible reason to be thankful for President Trump. That it took a b-list TV host to effectively address the trading imbalance between China and the USA was a surprise to say the least. And while there are penalties we have to pay in the form of global humiliation and shame - and the mulligans we grant for his malfeasance, mendacity and hypocrisy - so too does China.
Unfortunately, Trump, like an invasive species introduced to eradicate a biological threat to plants and animals, has become a greater threat than the species it was introduced to defeat. Realistically, China is unlikely to be defeated - partially (and temporarily) contained is the most likely outcome but it leaves us with a bigger problem - how do we now contain Trump? Does he have the wherewithal to shred the Constitution, eviscerate the Congress, remove term limits on his Presidency and self-exonerate for crimes and misdemeanors? Let's hope not - but he's headed in that direction.
I agree with much of the article but disagree that in order for "it to end well" "we must quietly forge the .. best deal we can get". No, we don't and should not have any deal with China, a bully state and a human rights abuser, which the article fails to mention. We don't need anything from China that another friendlier, democratic country can't make. We will even come out economically ahead if we have to spend less militarily to deal with an aggressive China.
Agree with this article. I do like Trump shaking up Chinese relationship, but his immature blustering is embarrassing.
My spouse works in the semi-conductor field. He's been working with chinese engineers for almost two decades. They steal code, have tried to infect their companies network with spyware - hackers posed as engineers. IP agreements mean nothing to them. These are consumer goods, scary to think what lengths they would go through for sensitive equipment, when they have support from high levels of Chinese government. Oh, hello Huawei.
I loathe Trump but strongly agree with him two issues: China and immigration.
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We don't allow extortionist behavior and contracts between companies in the US, so we, meaning the US government, should review and take steps to prevent such contracts by US companies with Chinese entities. This means punishing spineless US companies and executives who cave to such demands. Intellectual property theft by the Chinese should be punished in the same way. Identify the perps, sanction them and their companies, and secure warrants for their arrest. We need to get serious here, and the Chinese have to shape up and play by the WTO rules for real. They are big boys now and the 'developing country' status and indulgences are a sham whose demise is long overdue.
Let's hope the price of imports increase enough that we stop buying plastic junk at the Dollar store, TVs at Costco and another pair of must-have shoes. And maybe invest in our families, neighbours and communities. The planet will thank you.
Isn't ABC a good hedge anyway for America? The more engaged America becomes in other parts of the world, the better integration and good will. America can do this easily unlike Chinese debt-trap economics and win over friends. It might also be a solution to the immigration problem. A livelihood in your home country will ensure you stay put to care for your family.
Sorry but the comments here are hysterical. We ‘need to put them in their place’, ‘need to stand up to them, need a Trump to punch them in the nose’.
Good golly, we are economically interconnected, they make cheap stuff for American businesses to fuel our consumer economy, and China holds a lot of our debt. The TPP was an attempt to modulate China’s influence, it’s not like past administrations haven’t addressed this issue.
Seems like everyone’s solution is to punch someone in the face, literally and figuratively.
The Trump line that keeps buzzing in my mind is "What, you think America is so innocent?". Is this unfair? Or is the U.S. just getting a taste of it's own medicine? Haven't we taken advantage of other countries for decades? American companies "use", in every sense of the word, foreign workers, pay them slave wages, and then leave those countries to pay the rest of the labor bill for health insurance and so forth. And they take their profit off that labor and provide no investment in the workers communities (except for a McDonalds here and there). Oh and subsidies.....what do you call it when the tax laws are written to allow U.S. corporations to pay zero in taxes and hide their wealth in other countries? And China cheats and demands things for being allowed to do business there? The negotiator in chief for the U.S. is the biggest cheat and back stabber in the world. They are supposed to trust him? Bottom line here is we do what they do all the time: Now that the shoe is on the other foot, something must be done? Just like with not paying taxes: when we do it it is 'smart'. When you do the same thing, it's criminal... Why is anyone surprised when other places (like Iran and China) have a chance to fight back after America has taken advantage of them for decades? Ask yourself one other question: If you were in their shoes, would you let America roll you or fight back? Look where this type of situation has gotten American workers.
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Seems like Obama and Hillary did absolutely zero for the last 8 years on probably the biggest challenge America faces in its future and dont even talk about TPP. This is between the US and China as the EU has shown their weak spine, as usual. Wouldn't it have been nice if Obama took on this challenge years ago when we were stronger and China was weaker? And I thought all those numerous Obama guest appearances on Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Colbert and beautiful speeches written by speech writers would make China acquiesce on the trade front :) , Sad
Pull out of the Iran Nuclear deal, and the US Is on the verge of war with Iran. Pull out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, and we've now ushered in a new cold war with China. See a pattern here? This global and domestic chaos is not normal, blacklisting Huawei is all about 5G, the notion that they are spies is laughable hypocrisy. Trump normalising trends in the media will lead to 4 more years of chaos from which the US will never recover.
Mr. Friedman states that when it comes to trade “...values matter, differences in values matters, a modicum of trust matters and the rule of law matters.”
Trump should be trusted as the leader to fight this battle?
How about a secret meeting with no transcripts — this time, with Xi?
We can expect that a Helsinki style press conference would follow with Trump declaring “Mission Accomplished” after having made some kind of deal (for himself) that is shielded by “Executive Privilege.”
Sweet.
China's emergence coincided with Ronald Reagan's agreeing to sell them the world's most sophisticated computer. Soon after that event, China's technology soared and rockets, modern jets gushed forth from China's industry.
Lenin was right, but premature, when he said: "the West will sell us the rope that we will hang them with".
Lenin's Russia never cultivated the wealth to buy that rope--but China did.
China, diasporas everywhere—families living full lives outside of China and so struggling with taxes, crime, education just like the locals. They keep their China identity for generations. American diasporas (? do they exist) are kinda different, you can think how.
Chinese emigrants have myriad perspectives based on host and home country experiences. These diasporas too, will influence, strongly, the global role of east Asia (think Australia, Vancouver, Prato).
It’s pretty clear, which wave is more powerful.
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So, China sends products to the US which US consumers gobble up because of the price. Trump and is daughter have , for years,had their products made in China, US companies have provided the Chinese with forcing technology transfers ,and all of the rest and now the US is crying the blues because China's success.
Why is it wrong for China to tout a "China First" policy. Oh, BTW did you see where companies that sell Chines made footwear want to eliminate tariffs on those products because they might have to close down because of the tariffs.
I wonder what would happen in the US if all Chinese made products were removed from store shelves?
Whiners and complainers who want their cake and eat it too.
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Resolving USA/China trade relations will require at least 4 Friedman units, so the resolution of it all is not likely to be under Trump.
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Never wanting to disappoint folks who deserve each other - may I then make a request? Can China please take Donald Trump. I think a work camp in some distant province will be a good fit.
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In other words, we might be lucky Xi wasn't smart enough to buy the allegiance of Trump and McConnell at bargain basement prices the way Putin did.
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This has all now about Trust/ and as Reagan said to Russia using the old Russian Proverb it "Trust thru Verification" China has spent the last 40 years showing us in no uncertain terms that they are NOT to Be Trusted= Play by the Rules or it will be ABC anywhere but China!
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‘There cannot be two suns in the sky, nor two emperors on the earth.’ - Confucius.
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Trump is not smart enough to resolve any complex trade problem we might have with China. He seems to think he can just slap tariffs on Chinese products without any retaliation by China. Trump will likely just make the situation worse.
Look, the U.S. can no longer play the moral-high-ground card when it comes to protecting global human rights. We invaded Vietnam and Iraq using outright lies and killing God-only-know how many innocent citizens in those two countries. If the Chinese people wish to rid China of communism then let them do it. So, let's leave that off the table. Let's also accept this reality: China has 1.4 billion people. That's over 4 times the U.S. population. In time, sooner than later, their economy will overtake ours in size. Let's make that a good thing by planing for the future, like, um, China does. Our government should be involved in the process of ensuring that America's economy isn't just driven by entrepreneurs and capital. Why? Because entrepreneurs do stupid stuff with capital in America, constantly. This is the lesson we learned from the dot com blow up and the subprime mortgage blow out. We need a collective vision coupled with a plan to prosper in the coming World Economy 3.0. We did well in the industrial revolution and the incredible manufacturing boon that it unleashed. And we literally invented the information and technology age that spread computers, smart phones, and so much more all over the planet. If China has stolen from us, send them a bill. If China's government is ensuring that the right businesses can compete in the future, so should we. The last thing we should do is rely on Trump for anything, especially where China is concerned.
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Friedman knows taking china to task should have been done long ago. he knows Trump is exactly right in doing so, but he cant get up the gumption to give him the credit without the name calling.
Question - where was Obama on this? Why didnt Obama do anything about China? The answer - because he didnt know how. Obama knew nothing about business, or trade, or economics, or how to create jobs. Obama just let China eat our lunch. Thats what happens when you elect an incompetent President. Trump has lived and breathed business his whole life. Its no coincidence that once he executed his agenda, we now have a booming economy. Obama would have killed to have this economy, and Friedman knows it.
Great piece. Thank you.
I checked, and, outsourcing is at the root of the theft of the F35 plans. US management desire for cheap labor.
http://fortune.com/2017/10/14/hacked-f-35-data/
An Australian "contractor" (this means a supplier of cheap something ) that was part of the overall outsourcing of American talent had essentially zero safeguards for hacking.
So, it was hacked.
In a world where 13 year old's are trying to show how awesome at hacking they are here in the US, Corporations should assume that if they outsource to a Mom and Pop sweat shop in Australia that somebody will hack.
from the article: "...equipment like that made by China’s Huawei, which can transfer data and voices at hyperspeed, can also serve as an espionage platform, if China’s intelligence services exercise their right under Chinese law to demand access."
Wait a second!!! We already know that the NSA has made use of backdoors in US-made telecom equipment and has collected data from US carriers. That is, US intelligence has already done exactly what the author suggests that Chinese intelligence MIGHT do.
I'd also remind that author that it was the US that broke into Huawei's Shenzhen data center in 2014 and stole proprietary information. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html
Of course, when the US broke into a Chinese data center, that was okay because the NSA said that they were looking for evidence of CHINESE espionage.
Also from the article: "Moreover, in a dual-use world, you have to worry that if you have a Huawei chatbot in your home, an equivalent of Amazon’s Echo, you could also be talking to Chinese military intelligence." ...and if you have an Amazon Echo, it's the NSA that will be listening. Personally, I don't care much if Chinese military intelligence is listening to my kitchen conversation, but it would bother me a great deal to know that the NSA is listening.
Before I get comments... China is FAR from perfect, particularly in the area of human rights... but let's stick to the facts.
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Finally. It is high time someone at the NYT realizes the threat China is to, not only the US, but the world. They have been trading at an unfair advantage for way too long. Had previous presidents confronted Beijing previously, perhaps, we would not be "going down this road" now.
Passing the buck from one administration to the next has not worked.
I am no fan of Trump, but I have to agree that he is, surprisingly, doing a good job dealing with China. There is no country on our planet more committed to harming the world than China. Their rap sheet reads like a who's who of criminal enterprise: government sponsored theft of intellectual property, government sanctioned currency manipulation, government sponsored "re-education" of undesirable minorities and dissidents, government sponsored censorship of the free press, government led building of man-made islands in the disputed south china sea, government led erosion of freedoms for the people of Hong Kong, etc., etc., etc. The list goes on and on. China only understands one thing - power. They want it and for 40 years we've let them acquire it in the name of global economic prosperity. It's time to start pushing back and as boorish and ugly as Trump is, this is actually something his skills may be well suited to achieve.
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Interesting how Mr Friredman who has been one of the biggest shills for China trade and globalization over these many years along with other luminaries on this paper is now singing a different tune ? Hard to keep track of how our thought leaders, elites and otherwise mouthpieces for the powerful interests who run this country position changes are... Sorry all this change of heart is too late for the many workers throughout our great industrial rust belt who no longer have a job with a living wage or their dignity....
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It is amazing that Friedman wrote this article without a single reference to the Trans Pacific Partnership. Why is that? Why praise Trump as if he is doing something other than stoke the fears of his fearful and xenophobic base?
The instinct that drives this "war" against China is the same one that will destroy our primary advantage - the alliances we have built since WWII. There is a reason the Russians wanted this fool to lead the free world. To pepper the article with "Trump is right" is silly and detracts from any point Friedman is trying to make about China.
What about the TPP? It was conceived to address the concerns about China voiced in this article. Republicans and their poster boy smeared that effort and are orchestrating a much more damaging (to the middle class) trade war that really has its basis in the aforementioned xenophobia of their ignorant base.
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It proves that it takes all kinds of crazy in the world, which the average person doesn't deserve, when you have to live under them, and their dictatorial tactics, whether Xi Jinping, DT, Putin, and all the myriads around the world including those in the middle east. How billions of people are ending up with this mess, and lack of freedom, is a question for the ages. At least, America hopefully learned its lesson, and will vote out DT. Somehow, I hope that more people are finally realizing that Al Gore should of been President, and the electoral college ended up being a curse, a terrible curse.
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This article is about the fear of the loss of global American (white) Supremacy and dominance. And the POTUS is the chief Supremacist. ‘ The Chinese our stealing our supreme technological secrets, they are mining all our superior technical knowhow, they are advancing towards world dominance and they have to be stopped now!’ Too late. The Chinese leaders and the Chinese people can wait out a painful extended trade war much longer than the Americans can. They have been preparing for a time like this for decades. Meanwhile your POTUS, who so many folks seem to side with on this issue, continues to send out his juvenile tweets while the Chinese plot out a strategy with reason and seriousness that this potentially catastrophic ‘ economy war’ deserves. Yes I truly believe in his good judgement concerning this issue.
We could build our infrastructure if not for wacko environmental laws favoring a rodent over a railroad.
Over paid unions cause any infrastructure work to be more than 2x value.
Education?
Instead of idolizing basketball and rap stars...do your homework.
Remember somebody saying " those jobs are never coming back "
He stayed clear of any tough situations,made no waves..and nothing got done.
Go for it Trump.
Make progress and get things done,,like a wrecking ball.
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Wow, if I didn’t know better I would think that this piece kinda, sorta, was complimentary of Mr. Trump. Huh, I guess I’ve seen it all. No other president or politician today would have had the guts to take this on, Mr. Trump may be a bit clumsy but he’s the right person at the right time. I am so thankful that he is in the White House.
"globalization will start to fracture, and we’ll both be poorer for it."
This begs the question of who will be poorer for it as globalization in synergie with shareholder capitalism is brewing illiberalism. All those left behind in OECD countries, in despair of their lost middle class lifestyles, past and future, are rising to the call of nationalism and undemocratic forms of political expressing. Trump and Brexit were the first alarm bells with many more to come.
Looks like China has beat America business at its own game, that is, exploit anyone they can to make more money. Let's get the violins out now.
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The nation that ELECTS Trump is the nation that deserves him. No one else.
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Better late than never I guess. Is this the same writer who was just a few years ago pompously lecturing everyone that China was the future, unfettered free trade was fabulous, blue collar detractors to such trade were just resentful losers who needed retraining, and Chinese convergence to a Western norm in human rights and other categories was just a matter of time?
So now that China has moved up the supply chain and is threatening industries Friedman cares about he's seen the light?
Why not start the column with "I was wrong."
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