There is surely a balance to be struck to get some of the benefits of global trade, without creating a dependency that can be exploited to create leverage against you.
I struggle to comprehend this viewpoint, echoed by many, with respect to: what possible benefit of global trade is the United States (well, previous to tariffs anyway) already not receiving?
We can buy goods by printing money, which no other nation can lay claim to, because the U.S. Dollar is the default world currency. Everyone accepts USD, and wants USD. Every other nation on Earth in fact is always looking to buy dollars, because dollars are what everything is purchased in. Further, our standing in the globe and favorable geographic location means we can import anything from virtually anywhere, but most especially China, Korea, and Japan.
Yeah we don't "make things" here anymore, the pundits say, apart from dozens of product categories over hundreds of industries. "Everything comes from China!" Okay, and? I don't want a job in a factory and I suspect a shitload of other people here also don't, and my source for that is every factory and logistics center near me is constantly trying to hire people and seemingly being unable to.
There's no permanence here, and you don't understand history or even business if you think this imbalance and dependence doesn't equal weakness at some point in the future. Just because we want China to always work for us and give us what we want doesn't mean completely ceding control of the decision means it will work out. Does any business (operating in much less cut throat stakes than great-power geopolitics) even bank all their supply on external sources, let alone one, let alone that one being their biggest adversary? Madness.
But we have every reason to believe China will continue working for us because China benefits from that work. And insofar as the U.S. and China are adversaries at all seems to be purely culture war nonsense. China is not setting out to destroy the United States, they're setting out to sell the United States shit and we are setting out to buy it. The only reason there is even contention in this at all is that many pundits and analysts see the collapse of the American manufacturing sector as somehow the devious plans of a foreign adversary, and not the result of American business people seeking cheaper labor that works more efficiently overseas.
If we assume China is an adversary, then I would say it logically follows that the vast majority of American executives are in fact collaborating with the enemy, because they played critical roles in getting China to where it is today.
China is a potential adversary because they are an authoritarian, undemocratic regime making military threats against neighboring free, democratic nations (Taiwan). If everything stayed exactly the way it is today, except the Communist party rulership were dissolved and replaced by a multi-party constitutional republic with representatives appointed through free, open elections I don't think the US would have nearly the same incentive to divest from China.
Free markets don't care about moral concerns like that though, just what's most economically efficient. And in the absence of tariffs, trading with China is very economically efficient.
> <blank> is a potential adversary because they are an authoritarian, undemocratic regime making military threats against neighboring free, democratic nations
Fill in the blank with preferred major nation power of your choice.
> China is a potential adversary because they are an authoritarian, undemocratic regime making military threats against neighboring free, democratic nations (Taiwan).
As opposed to an authoritarian, Democratic regime making military threats against neighboring free, democratic nations (Canada)?
> If everything stayed exactly the way it is today, except the Communist party rulership were dissolved and replaced by a multi-party constitutional republic with representatives appointed through free, open elections I don't think the US would have nearly the same incentive to divest from China.
Why does the U.S. have the right to declare unilaterally what forms of government are acceptable and what aren't? And no I'm not saying we have to necessarily trade with them, obviously, apart from the fact that the CCP came into power in 1949. We're a bit late to suddenly have issues with their government NOW after nearly half a century spent working with them in the open, and giving them shit tons of money.
The US's authoritarian tendencies are not in remotely the same league as China and it's absurd to pretend otherwise.
Our right to declare that rule apart from the consent of the governed is unacceptable comes from the fact that it is unacceptable, not because the US has any special rights to declare it so. We hold these truths to be self-evident, now just as we did then.
The US has always had that same fundamental issue with China's government; we've just chosen to react to that reality in different ways over the years. China being more of an economic powerhouse now makes it a larger threat to human freedom than it has been in the past, so there are valid reasons to re-consider the status quo.