The trade dispute, though, is now about much more than economics—it’s testing whether a democratically elected government can prevail in the face of the authoritarian government of the world’s most populous country. And everyone who values democracy or human rights should hope that, one way or another, the United States ultimately prevails in that struggle.
Look, I like free trade. But for security reasons and with our dominant economic position after World War II, we accepted trade terms tilted against us.
And we did the same with China decades after that, hoping prosperity would make China less hostile.
It is natural to revise those deals as our relative economic position has worsened with the rise of other countries. And while China may yet moderate its behavior with prosperity, in the short term prosperity has simply enabled Chinese territorial ambitions.
All Americans should want America to win this struggle even if Trump gets the credit.
Remember that Xi runs a police state that puts Moslems in concentration camps, represses Tibetans, is crushing the remaining freedoms of Hong Kongers ahead of time, sees Falun Gong as a threat, enables North Korea's nuclear threats, wants to absorb and crush a free Taiwan, and wants to control large swathes of international waters in the South China Sea--and that's before I've checked their latest edition of their official map, which one day will look like this:
Xi wants your support to defeat Trump's "trade war" with China. Are you really cool with siding with dictatorial China against Trump?
UPDATE: The Defense Department called out China on its "coercive interference in Vietnam's longstanding oil and gas activities in the South China Sea (SCS)[.]"
UPDATE: China's growth has been impressive. And it isn't just moving peasants from fields into factories, which is what I've largely credited for their economic rise. But at some point the problems that have arisen during the rise won't be overcome. Are we there yet?
UPDATE: Efforts to redress the trade terms imbalance predate Trump. As the article notes, Trump is more willing to do battle and unlike the prior issue with Japan, China is not an American ally that provides security benefits that restrain our use of pressure to redress the terms of trade. Still, this is not comforting: "[The] U.S. is unlikely to back down without concessions that China cannot make."
