As much as I hate Trump, I must admit that the alternative at the time involved continuing to pretend China is an ally.
HRC was a principal driver of the Trans Pacific Partnership. I've heard claims that it was about containing China but they've always come with no citations. My general understanding was that the TPP would have made it easier to outsource to China even more, harmonizing (at least on paper) IP law to allow more outsourcing of things like programming, radiology, CAD, IT, accounting, paralegal, etc., which could have been a final nail in the coffin of the US middle class. These are among the last upwardly mobile middle class jobs that remain in the United States. While it's true that US manufacturing remains a large component of GDP, automation and efficiency gains have made it a declining contributor to employment.
I categorically cannot vote for Trump because he is a racist and is associated with fascists (categorical blacklist in my mind) and is personally constitutionally unfit to be president, but I fear that Biden will return us to a course of pretending China is a friendly nation. Like the last election where I unhappily voted against Trump (not "for" HRC), there is no good choice.
The motive for our China policy is of course the same as the motive for looking the other way at Saudi human rights abuses and their role in 9/11: money. Had Hitler found a way to line American pockets, I wonder if that holocaust thing would have mattered.
International Trade Treaties were meant to do so earlier but wound up botched by including too many outright special interests forcing deal breakers. Beyond even state level interests into irrelevant "noisy minority" ones like trying to enforce location name branding onto new world which used it for centuries as implicitly "in the style of Parma".
The IP strategy ones often missed that it wasn't stealing - they sent the plans over themselves to save money. Even without illicit third shifts or counterfitting per se they would fundamentally learn enough to compete on knock offs. If the IP was actually precious to them they would have never sent it abroad to manufacture as the percentage saved wouldn't be worth it.
In my opinion what is spoken about IP in general and trade with China beyond "it is cheap/has high industrial concentration advantages" are comfortable lies to ease anxiety of the status quo as opposed to recognizing a nuanced and messy strategic situation of many actors which doesn't fit into a TED talk let alone a sound bite.
I don't think it was missed, in whole or in nuance, by anyone paying attention, but bringing attention to it was met with accusations of racism, and those were partisan.
Not that I'm chill with the Right, either: the "markets can do no wrong" philosophy leads to an enormous blind spot. Greedy optimizers fall apart when sub-components need to coordinate. When an adversary realizes they can just pay the hand to shoot the foot, suddenly the system finds itself with a destroyed industrial base but can't understand what just happened because the explanation lies in the blind spot. That's an even bigger problem than easily co-opted social justice causes.
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As much as I hate Trump, I must admit that the alternative at the time involved continuing to pretend China is an ally.
HRC was a principal driver of the Trans Pacific Partnership. I've heard claims that it was about containing China but they've always come with no citations. My general understanding was that the TPP would have made it easier to outsource to China even more, harmonizing (at least on paper) IP law to allow more outsourcing of things like programming, radiology, CAD, IT, accounting, paralegal, etc., which could have been a final nail in the coffin of the US middle class. These are among the last upwardly mobile middle class jobs that remain in the United States. While it's true that US manufacturing remains a large component of GDP, automation and efficiency gains have made it a declining contributor to employment.
I categorically cannot vote for Trump because he is a racist and is associated with fascists (categorical blacklist in my mind) and is personally constitutionally unfit to be president, but I fear that Biden will return us to a course of pretending China is a friendly nation. Like the last election where I unhappily voted against Trump (not "for" HRC), there is no good choice.
The motive for our China policy is of course the same as the motive for looking the other way at Saudi human rights abuses and their role in 9/11: money. Had Hitler found a way to line American pockets, I wonder if that holocaust thing would have mattered.
I too remember getting called "racist" and "[economically] dumb" for suggesting that we shouldn't ignore China's IP strategy.
I've seen hopeful signs that standing up to China is now a bipartisan position, but 5 years ago it certainly wasn't.
It was bipartisan then but in different terms.
International Trade Treaties were meant to do so earlier but wound up botched by including too many outright special interests forcing deal breakers. Beyond even state level interests into irrelevant "noisy minority" ones like trying to enforce location name branding onto new world which used it for centuries as implicitly "in the style of Parma".
The IP strategy ones often missed that it wasn't stealing - they sent the plans over themselves to save money. Even without illicit third shifts or counterfitting per se they would fundamentally learn enough to compete on knock offs. If the IP was actually precious to them they would have never sent it abroad to manufacture as the percentage saved wouldn't be worth it.
In my opinion what is spoken about IP in general and trade with China beyond "it is cheap/has high industrial concentration advantages" are comfortable lies to ease anxiety of the status quo as opposed to recognizing a nuanced and messy strategic situation of many actors which doesn't fit into a TED talk let alone a sound bite.
I don't think it was missed, in whole or in nuance, by anyone paying attention, but bringing attention to it was met with accusations of racism, and those were partisan.
Not that I'm chill with the Right, either: the "markets can do no wrong" philosophy leads to an enormous blind spot. Greedy optimizers fall apart when sub-components need to coordinate. When an adversary realizes they can just pay the hand to shoot the foot, suddenly the system finds itself with a destroyed industrial base but can't understand what just happened because the explanation lies in the blind spot. That's an even bigger problem than easily co-opted social justice causes.