Are Chinese trade practices really unfair?
The answer lies in the increased competitiveness of Chinese producers. When Western companies had a near-monopoly on know-how and technology, their competitive edge more than compensated for distortions created by Chinese barriers to trade and investment. But, as Chinese enterprises have become increasingly serious competitors in their own right, Western countries’ capacity to bear the extra costs of non-tariff barriers has diminished.
Are China’s Trade Practices Really Unfair?
By: Daniel Gros – CEPS
America’s double standards
If China wants to tax her citizens to subsidize goods for US consumers, the right answer is flowers, chocolates and a nice thank-you card, as you would for any gift. Even intellectual property protection is an iffy cause. Theft is bad. But if selling the technology isn’t worth the market access, US companies don’t have to do it. Moreover, much intellectual property protection is the right to just the kind of continuing profits that we bemoan at home, in the new worry about increasing monopoly. Just how enthusiastic are we about defending pharmaceutical companies’ right to charge whatever they want in the US for their intellectual property?
Flowers not tariffs
By: John Cochrane – Stanford University
A fight for the world order of the future
Can the United States imagine a viable global economic system in 2050 in which its economy is half the size of the world’s largest? Could a political leader acknowledge that reality in a way that permits negotiation over what such a world would look like? While it might be unacceptable to the United States to be so greatly surpassed in economic scale, does it have the means to stop it? Can China be held down without inviting conflict?
Can anything hold back China’s economy?
By: Larry Summers – Harvard University
