The United States has become increasingly dependent on China to fund the sort of lifestyle Americans expect. There are good arguments to be made for occasional deficit spending, but the United States has not managed its debt responsibly. This leaves us vulnerable to those that buy and hold our debt. Opinions differ on what the exact effects would be if China were to dump our debt, but the one clear thing is that this would be bad for America.
NAFTA cannot be called anything but an economic disaster for the United States, but that is not to say that profits have not been made. Multinational corporations have seen their profits grow as a result of NAFTA, but those profits have not created jobs in the United States. When the public is sold on free trade agreements, they are told that free trade agreements create economic activity through increased trade. Unfortunately for American workers, that economic activity usually means a few rich individuals are profiting at their expense.
The current administration’s love affair with free trade is beginning to snowball. Before the dust has even settled on the new trade pacts with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, President Obama initiated an intense push for a Trans Pacific Partnership. A new agreement with the EU would mean that the United States would have opened its borders to a large majority of the world.
The following article originally appeared on Foreign Policy.
If you want to understand the truly upside-down nature of the thinking of Washington’s foreign policy elite on Asia, take a look at the just released report and press commentary by the U.S.-ASEAN Strategy Commission of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
During last month’s State of the Union address, President Obama announced plans to create a Trade Enforcement Unit that would oversee America’s trading relationships. This unit was necessitated by the actions of countries like China, who have been able to flagrantly violate the terms of their agreements with the U.S. and, consequently, have gained huge advantages
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