Actually, really the blame goes to Nixon on this. Nixon ended 25 years of isolation between the US and China [1], and further played China against Russia.
The deeper reality is that US corporations wanted cheap labor. And the Chinese wanted to increase their standard of living for their people. But also, China turned into a nuclear power while people weren't looking, and trade between the US and China would prevent any wars.
It's easy to look back and say one thing, but back in the 60's/70's the nuclear threat to the US was real, and trade was the most powerful deterrence option that could lead to long lasting peace.
I don't believe blaming 1970s-1980s Presidents for this is reasonable. China was economically tiny, and the alliance was conductive for the Cold War. The error was not pivoting later and going for the 'economic engagement will lead to democracy' 'theory'.
Look at U.S. factories now vs the 1980s - way fewer workers but making more stuff. Yeah, companies moved jobs overseas, but they also went big on automation to boost efficiency. That's a huge reason factory jobs disappeared.
As for COVID origins, let's not perpetuate unproven theories.
I think we are paying too much attention to the political opening of China and not enough to the economic factors affecting the US Dollar at the time. We are right to blame Nixon, not for opening up China, but for closing the doors to Fort Knox with the Nixon Shock in ending US-Dollar gold convertability. This resulted in high inflation and a devaluing of the dollar via a floating exchange rate. This made US exports cheap (easier to export), but for other countries assets in dollars fell in exchange-value, and their exports became more expensive (harder to export). This happened at the same time as the OPEC crisis, so Carter was facing a failing economy with extreme inflation. And by appointing Volcker who hiked interest rates to stop the inflation, caused a recession and a permanent deindustrialization of the US as well as dozens of countries with US assets going bankrupt. We ended up embracing a deficit economy powered by financialization, but since countries like China had didn't have dollar assets, didn't face austerity measures and structural adjustment programs from the IMF, and were industrialized, they could take up all the lost manufacturing that the US was willing to lose in order to maintain global hegemony in other ways.
It was Clinton who made the WTO, GATT and NAFTA treaties that made manufacturing be sucked out of the US.
Carter was only following up on Nixon. It was Nixon-Kissinger who had the brilliant idea of splitting the communist bloc (an idea which I’d say likely helped shape the end of the Cold War - without China influencing Asia in cooperation, the Soviet threat was much reduced). Carter was only following up on a winning strategy.
But it was Clinton and his team who did the most work to wipe out the American industrial sector.
Clinton kind of finished the job which killed what remained of US industry, but we cannot ignore the role that Carter played to deregulate many industries (though some of the deregulation was good), as well as Carter's appointment of Paul Volcker, whose interest rate hike shocked the US into embracing trade deficits and empowered China to take up on lost US manufacturing. Nixon's 1973 shock left Carter with the stagflation which put him in the situation to begin with, so his political wins came at a horrific economic cost, and ended up blowing back at us in the end.
bb88|1 year ago
The deeper reality is that US corporations wanted cheap labor. And the Chinese wanted to increase their standard of living for their people. But also, China turned into a nuclear power while people weren't looking, and trade between the US and China would prevent any wars.
It's easy to look back and say one thing, but back in the 60's/70's the nuclear threat to the US was real, and trade was the most powerful deterrence option that could lead to long lasting peace.
[1] https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/nixons-trip-china
yyyk|1 year ago
mitemte|1 year ago
As for COVID origins, let's not perpetuate unproven theories.
notthemessiah|1 year ago
wahisurf|1 year ago
House panel concludes that COVID-19 pandemic came from a lab leak https://www.science.org/content/article/house-panel-conclude...
Two-thirds of Americans believe that the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab in China https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45389-americans-b...
also, Harvard Business Review agreed that "some U.S. regions lost manufacturing jobs as a result of trade with China in the early 2000s" https://hbr.org/2022/11/has-trade-with-china-really-cost-the...
kranke155|1 year ago
Carter was only following up on Nixon. It was Nixon-Kissinger who had the brilliant idea of splitting the communist bloc (an idea which I’d say likely helped shape the end of the Cold War - without China influencing Asia in cooperation, the Soviet threat was much reduced). Carter was only following up on a winning strategy.
But it was Clinton and his team who did the most work to wipe out the American industrial sector.
notthemessiah|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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