It’s preposterous. There’s no problem that’s getting addressed with this solution, this is a solution in search of some problem.
The Case for Free Trade
countries are mostly China’s neighbors in Asia. Like the TPP, it seeks to create an alliance to push China toward the rule of law, but the Biden Administration so far has left trade entirely out of the agreement. Instead, the IPEF negotiations are focusing entirely on non-trade issues like climate and labor policy—issues that give progressives opportunities to impose their policies on other countries and provide rent-seeking opportunities for labor unions and politically connected businesses in renewable energy and other favored industries.
IPEF has the potential to be a powerful diplomatic tool that helps to bring countries into America’s orbit and away from China’s. Beijing’s chauvinistic approach to foreign policy has alienated most of China’s neighbors and allies. They follow along because they lack alternatives. IPEF and the TPP could offer them a way out and make it easier for China’s smaller neighbors to stand up for themselves in a united front as they move toward Americanstyle institutions that protect civil, political, and economic liberties.
IPEF could do all that, and so could the TPP, but America currently has no voice in the TPP, and IPEF risks becoming little more than another tool that progressives can use to force their policy wish list on countries that don’t want it. From the perspective of IPEF’s members, the Biden Administration’s approach is little different from Beijing’s. The next Administration can give China’s neighbors a better choice by refocusing IPEF on trade, dropping most of its non-trade issues, and turning it into a forum to promote democracy and strengthen alliances while pressuring Beijing to make needed reforms.
Play the long game. It took two generations to win the Cold War, and there were many reasons for that success. The fact that the planned economy is inherently inferior to free-market capitalism played a role. So did diplomatic, military, and economic pressure from free countries. But culture was just as important, and it did not come from any government. Blue jeans and rock’n’ roll helped to win the Cold War as much as any deliberate policy did. So did images of fashion and prosperity in American movies and television shows like Dallas.
Such informal bottom-up processes will also play a vital role in helping to turn China from an authoritarian threat into a freer and less hostile power. It will take a long time, and the slow process will garner few headlines, but
it can work. A conservative Administration will support efforts by ordinary Americans to engage with ordinary Chinese people through social networks,
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