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dragon play casino When Trade Becomes a Weapon
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: We’re now engaged in a trade war with China.dragon play casino
Actually, you probably haven’t heard this one before. I’m not talking about Donald Trump’s clumsy tariffs aimed at reducing America’s trade deficit. I’m talking instead about the sweeping new controls the Biden administration imposed last Friday on exports of technology to China — controls meant to constrain other advanced countries as well as the United States.
Unlike the Trump tariffs, these controls have a clear goal: to prevent or at least delay Beijing’s attempts to produce advanced semiconductors, which are of crucial military as well as economic importance. If this sounds like a very aggressive move on the part of the United States, that’s because it is.
But it needs to be put in context. Recent events have undermined the sunny view of globalization that long dominated Western policy. It’s now apparent that despite global integration, there are still dangerous bad actors out there — and interdependence sometimes empowers these bad actors. But it also gives good actors ways to limit bad actors’ ability to do harm. And the Biden administration is evidently taking these lessons to heart.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. The postwar world trade system, with its limits on protectionism and waves of tariff reduction, emerged partly out of the view that trade promoted peace. This was the firm belief of Cordell Hull, F.D.R.’s secretary of state, arguably the father of that system. The European Union grew out of the 1951 Coal and Steel Community, established with the explicit goal of making war impossible by binding European industry together.
Later, Germany would promote economic links with Russia and China under the doctrine of “Wandel durch Handel” — change through trade — which asserted that integration with the world economy would promote democratization and rule of law.
Obviously it didn’t work. Russia is led by a brutal autocrat who invaded Ukraine. China appears to have retrogressed politically, moving back to erratic one-man rule.
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