A persistent theme in Republican campaigning these past few years has been the effort to portray Democrats in general, and President Biden in particular, as being soft on China — in contrast to Donald Trump’s supposed toughness.
This looks ironic now, since Trump, who had favored a ban, suddenly reversed his position, reportedly around the same time that he had a sit-down with a billionaire who donates to Republican campaigns and has a large stake in the Chinese-controlled company.
Even before his TikTok flip-flop, however, the reality was that while Trump talked a xenophobic line that shaded into racism — for example, trying to relabel Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” — and imposed showy but ineffective tariffs, he never had a coherent strategy for confronting our biggest rival.
China just filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization about the Inflation Reduction Act, which, despite its name, is at its core an attempt to fight climate change by subsidizing the transition to a low-emission economy.
And it has often engaged in blatantly discriminatory policy — for example, for several years, until 2019, non-Chinese companies were essentially prevented from supplying electric vehicle batteries to Chinese car manufacturers.
As I said, Biden’s China policy is so tough that it makes me, someone who generally favors a rules-based system, nervous, although unlike many economists — who, I’d argue, don’t fully grasp how the world has changed — I do believe it’s the right approach.
The original article contains 913 words, the summary contains 241 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A persistent theme in Republican campaigning these past few years has been the effort to portray Democrats in general, and President Biden in particular, as being soft on China — in contrast to Donald Trump’s supposed toughness.
This looks ironic now, since Trump, who had favored a ban, suddenly reversed his position, reportedly around the same time that he had a sit-down with a billionaire who donates to Republican campaigns and has a large stake in the Chinese-controlled company.
Even before his TikTok flip-flop, however, the reality was that while Trump talked a xenophobic line that shaded into racism — for example, trying to relabel Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” — and imposed showy but ineffective tariffs, he never had a coherent strategy for confronting our biggest rival.
China just filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization about the Inflation Reduction Act, which, despite its name, is at its core an attempt to fight climate change by subsidizing the transition to a low-emission economy.
And it has often engaged in blatantly discriminatory policy — for example, for several years, until 2019, non-Chinese companies were essentially prevented from supplying electric vehicle batteries to Chinese car manufacturers.
As I said, Biden’s China policy is so tough that it makes me, someone who generally favors a rules-based system, nervous, although unlike many economists — who, I’d argue, don’t fully grasp how the world has changed — I do believe it’s the right approach.
The original article contains 913 words, the summary contains 241 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!