Posted on 06/10/2005 12:08:19 PM PDT by OESY
Hillary Clinton has met the enemy, and it is foreign investment. She unleashed a barnburner of a speech at a New York fundraising event the other day and reserved special salvos for China. She warned that we are “giving up our fiscal sovereignty” to the Chinese. Our borrowing from Beijing makes it impossible to “get tougher on China,” she said, because, “How do you get tough on your banker?”
This line runs in the family. At the Democratic Convention last year, Bill Clinton lambasted the Bushies for borrowing “from foreign governments, mostly Japan and China. Sure, they’re competing with us for good jobs, but how can we enforce our trade laws against our bankers?” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have made similar arguments, as they portray Chinese investment in the U.S. as a national-security threat.
We’ve been here before. All the same things were said 20 years ago about Japanese investment. Now China is becoming the boogeyman. Somehow it is always pesky ASIATICS who are the focus of this kind of populist roundhouse, which combines economic illiteracy and political demagoguery to make for an irresistible, Clintonian cheap shot.
China-bashing is rich coming from the Clintons. In the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton called “most favored nation” trading status for China “unconscionable.” In office, his conscience quickly gave way, as he embraced most-favored-nation status and sent his commerce secretary to Beijing to grovel for business deals. In 1996, Chinese agents helped raise funds for his reelection campaign. When the Clintons complain of kowtowing to China and dependence on Chinese money, they know whereof they speak.
By rights, Japan should still be the chief “how dare they invest here” whipping boy, but Japan-baiting feels so 1985. Its economy is still four times bigger than China’s, and it owns more U.S. treasuries. It has roughly $680 billion to China’s $225 billion. If the U.S. economy is threatened by a foreign power it is Japan, which — by the Clintons’ logic — should have taken us over long ago.
When other countries buy up our debt, it isn’t nefarious. As David Malpass of Bear Stearns points out, Japan owns so many U.S. bonds because its aging population wants to own safe but relatively high-performing assets. The Chinese, meanwhile, link their currency to the dollar and invest their dollar holdings in U.S. treasuries. This dollar linkage has provided a stable environment for robust Chinese economic growth. Democrats who complain about cheap Chinese labor should welcome this, since sustained growth is the only way to boost a country’s wages.
The Chinese also accumulate U.S. assets because they run a $160 billion trade surplus with us. But the surplus is exaggerated, since part of China’s trade with America is triangular, with the Chinese importing goods from other Asian countries, then shipping them to us. In any case, foreign ownership of U.S. assets (representing about $2.6 trillion of $80 trillion total U.S. assets, according to one estimate) works to everyone’s benefit. Japan and China own higher-performing assets than they would otherwise. If they found, say, French assets more attractive, it would be truly worrisome. And more capital is invested in our growing economy.
Of course, China — the nation’s first free-market Communist state — bears watching. Hillary aside, it’s duly being watched. Don Rumsfeld recently zinged the Chinese arms buildup. Doesn’t he know he risks offending his “banker”? The Bush administration has been adamant about defending Taiwan and is (wrongheadedly) pressuring the Chinese to devalue their currency. How can it so brazenly cross its financial masters?
The Clinton China attack is part of a trend. The Democrats are dabbling with a peculiar multilateralist isolationism. They are reflexively in favor of international institutions, but oppose free-trade deals, suggest we cocoon ourselves from foreign capital, complain about the cost of America’s engagement in the world, and blanch at the ambition and idealism of President Bush’s foreign policy. Hillary’s speech should have come with a sign attached: “Warning — more demagoguery ahead.”
Well, she can always ask her husband to return the money they gave him.
Pretty rich, considering how Indonesian and Chinese billionaires "invested" in her Co-President.
And her husband was famous for his get-tough policy with China. (sarcasm)
Yeah and I guess the missle technology that the Bent One allowed the Chicoms to have is not nearly the threat that their buying US Treasury Bonds represents.
We are. Why isn't the Republican party leading the way on this issue?
Capitalism is dangerous. Hillary told me so.
But the trade deficit with a sworn enemy of the US is at least as critical.
Hillary asks how can you get tough with your banker. I ask he how she can get tough with her and her husbands campaign fund contributor.
"We are. Why isn't the Republican party leading the way on this issue?"
The Republicans have addressed Chinas currency and is looking into tarriffs.
Clinton gave up the fiscal sovereignty to the Chinese back in 1993. We now have to clean up his mess. That, like all things political take time.
Same as cleaning up Clintons recession and dismantling of the intelligence community.
"But the trade deficit with a sworn enemy of the US is at least as critical."
Trade deficits mean nothing. It just means that in monetary value they are exporting more goods to us than we are exporting to them.
"But the trade deficit with a sworn enemy of the US is at least as critical."
Trade deficits mean nothing. It just means that in monetary value they are exporting more goods to us than we are exporting to them.
The reason I say this is, I'm reading the article and saying to myself:
"Gee, this situation sure sounds familiar. Why?
Of course! That's the press conference JJ gives when he's getting ready to shake down another company!
But that's silly, isn't it? H-Rod would never use PRC money to win an election...
I don't think that will miraculously make products imported from China more expensive. The subsidized labor and property that China is providing its industries, as well as its practices of dumping and intellectual property theft make it an unsavory business partner. When you combine China's military spending and state-side espionage, there's no doubt that dealing with them is a liability. It's sad that it takes a Hillary Clinton to point it out.
Might I suggest Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose"?
It goes like this. The Chinese gave us stuff we wanted/needed. We gave them dollars. They gave us the dollars back for Treasury Notes. They can have the dollars back if they want. Sooner or later they have to buy stuff from us that they want/need and we get the dollars back. If they never want stuff in return(e.g. they burn their dollars), all the stuff we got is FREE (ie the U.S. can reprint the money without the risk of inflation and buy more stuff and reduce taxes). It's called capitalism, look it up.
P.S. Stop listening to Hillary, she's a Marxist.
A young woman lay in bed in the wee hours, unable to sleep. She had finished law school. A young man had agreed to take her home to meet his mother. What to do, what to do.
Suddenly Satan appeared at the foot of her bed, horns scraping the ceiling, hooves, stink of sulfur--the whole schmear.
She cowered at first, then threw back the covers and demanded to know what he wanted.
He replied, "It's really what you want, isn't it dear? You can go with that rube to Arkansas and spend the rest of your life drafting contracts for chumps, or I can give you fame & fortune. You will travel, hob-nob with world leaders, eat the best food, have a magnficent wardrobe, and so forth and so on. Of course, you'll have to lie, cheat, betray your country and steal. Maybe even kill.
I can't promise you happiness, and even I can't do anything about your gams, but I can give you all that.
In exchange, of course, I'll have your immortal soul in hell forever."
She looked him the eye for a long time and finally said,
"Ok, what's the catch?"
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