This article originally appeared on TradeReform.org.

China’s mercantilism is not just dragging us down, as the importer of choice. It is dragging down their Asian neighbors.

China has run up a $74B trade surplus with its ASEAN neighbors, “prompting some rethinking of the conventional wisdom that China’s rise is a windfall for the whole neighborhood.”

The narrative is shifting back to reality, though too gradually, in the press. Currency manipulation is being recognized as a major global issue, and indeed the underlying cause of the Great Recession:

Congress could neutralize currency manipulation right now, by passing HR 2378 and S 1023. The solution is simple. Because currency manipulation/ misalignment is a subsidy, simply neutralize it with countervailing or antidumping duties. Those remedies are long accepted for other subsidies, just apply them to the currency valuation version of subsidies.

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