Trade relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China have been strained for many years. However, in recent months the contentious relations have bordered on becoming outright conflicts. This is not to say that the U.S. and China will take up arms at any point in the near future, but they are certainly lobbing “economic grenades” so to speak.

According to MoneyMorning.com, both sides are now attempting to portray the other as “protectionist” – the ultimate dirty word of international commerce. Unfortunately for the United States, Chinese retribution for alleged offenses is just as much bark as it is bite.

In April, 2010, the U.S. chicken industry was placed under a second set of new tariff regulations from China. The commerce ministry imposed charges of up to 31.4 percent on imports of U.S. chicken in response to alleged subsidies granted to U.S. chicken producers. This tariff was appended to a 105.4 percent tariff on U.S. poultry products that was enacted in February.

China and the U.S. have a long and storied history of trade clashes, but in almost every instance an objective observer could come away seeing nothing more than Chinese offenses.

Force instance, the Chinese overtly manipulate their currency to price-out competition from the United States in almost every economic sector. We cannot compete against the undervalued prices of Chinese goods. But if the United States, officially or unofficially, so much as mentions this manipulation it is threatened by Beijing with tariffs or geopolitical posturing (such as missile tests aimed at Taiwan, or granting support to the anti-American theocracy in Iran). The U.S. then apologizes and is forced to recant, sometimes before anything was even said, before backing down.

This happens time and again in a U.S-China relationship that is increasingly one-sided. The U.S. could, and should, have a great deal of influence over China; but our porous political system and easily swayed political elite cannot muster itself to push back.

China needs our crazed consumption market just as much as we need its cheap products, the relationship would be mutually beneficial if both sides acted in their own best interests. Unfortunately that is not the case. The Chinese do what is best for China, and the United States does what is best for China.

A perceived subsidy granted to American poultry producers is the latest in a long line of manufactured conflicts between Beijing and the American people. In 2008 and 2009 there was an uproar in Beijing when the president was advised to place a 35 percent depreciating tariff against Chinese tire and rubber exports. Even after President Obama cut the tariff – which was nearly universally deemed a necessary provision – back to just 15 percent the Chinese still attacked “American protectionism.”

The result of our tariff on their rubber was their February 2010 tariff on our chicken.

The worst part of the U.S.-China trade wars is not the fact that the two are at one another’s throats; it is the fact that Beijing is not consistently called out for its nonsense.

The U.S. does grant some agricultural subsidies to its farmers. China is probably right when it says we subsidize our poultry exports. However, China also subsidizes its agricultural sectors, and its poultry farmers. It also subsidizes carmakers, steel production, mining operations, oil companies, electronics makers, textile mills, and every other imaginable sector of its economy.

Instead of getting on the phone to Beijing and having our Commerce and Treasury Secretaries pander to the delicate sensibilities of our most dangerous economic competitor, the United States needs to send China a message by simply acknowledging every overt and covert illegal manipulation they engage in.

The U.S. could rather easily build a coalition of “anti-China” nations, Europe has just as many problems with the Chinese as we do, and seal them off until they participate honestly. This is what we did with the Soviet bloc, and this is what we did with China until the shortsighted Bush administration rammed them through the WTO.

The world economy got along fine when China, and its 1.4 billion people, were barely part of it. We don’t need China, China needs us, and it is time our politicians started acting like it.

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