Friday, May 11, 2007

Trade with China

Let's get China interdependent with us. Then if China is thinking of attacking us they have to count the cost of the loss of their huge trade with us. Richard Rahn makes the case at the Washington Times:     The Chinese are also very big customers of U.S. businesses, and when they buy products, such as Boeing jets, they create many high-paying jobs for Americans (that tend to be higher-paying than the lost textile worker jobs). The Chinese are also big direct investors in the U.S. And when they do something like update an old Miami hotel, they create many more jobs for Americans in the construction and hotel industries, and give America a better hotel stock, which benefits everyone from the customers to the taxman.     Despite the political demagoguery, tens of millions of Americans -- whether they be Texas cotton farmers, Boeing airplane workers, Miami hotel and construction workers, or American homebuyers who can get lower cost mortgages -- are all better off due to the hard-working people in China. Yes, a few American textile workers have lost their jobs, but when Americans spend $15 for a pair of slacks that would have cost them $25, they have another $10 to spend in restaurants and on other goods and services that create many more jobs than were lost.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

On a more depressing note, greater interdependence with China makes the US less free to go to war with China, if, say, the PLA decided to "cross the Taiwan Straits" as they so delicately phrase it. Every dollar of trade with China means an end to the US' freedom to intervene on the side of the Taipei government in the event of a conflict. If you're a complete pacifist, you say "thank God!" But personally, as an American, I'd find the possibility of a successful Taiwan takeover abetted by US-China trade interdependence both shameful and humiliating.