China policy (E2)
Front Running looks at the ‘Sputnik moment’ for the US as China overtakes it in high-tech achievements. Donald Trump won 2016 on the promise to ‘Make America Great Again’, but has imposing new trade conditions on China worked? Are any candidates proposing an industrial policy that can trump Trump’s policy? How was it that China was able to overtake America in the first place?
Max and Stacy are joined by guests Dan Collins, a businessman who lived and worked in China for 20 years, and Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and a researcher at the Levy Institute. They trace the history of the policy first set in motion by the Clinton administration in 2000 when Congress was urged to accept China into the WTO. Trump’s current trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, was almost the lone voice at the time arguing that allowing China into the WTO would destroy US manufacturing. He was right, everyone else was wrong. How can the US be extracted from its own disastrous mistakes? Is it possible to catch up to China’s high-tech advantage? Dan Collins notes that there has been a manufacturing boom over the past two decades, only it’s been happening in China, not America. Marshall Auerback believes it is possible to remedy that. Tune in to learn how.