To The Reader’s Forum:

The resulting hollowing out of American manufacturing was just accepted as the price of having China inside rather than outside of the global trading system. This was the view of the Bush and Obama administrations.

However, China has been cheating and President Trump is calling them out. Here is why: China has used debt imperialism. It lends money to developing countries then seizes collateral assets like mines and infrastructure when the loans aren’t repaid. The Chinese practice extreme protectionism. China keeps foreign goods out with high rariffs and impenetrable regulations and it subsidizes domestic industries with cheap energy, low cost loans and lax environmental regulations.

The Chinese practice forced technology transfer. If a foreign company wants to operate in China, Beijing requires it to take a majority local partner and transfer its technology to that partner, which trasnfers its technology to the government.

The Chinese practice major cybertheft. The Chinese military runs an army of hackers who break into foreign networks and steal whatever business and military intellectual property they can find. This has allowed Chinese companies to produce copycat versions of major products and its military to produce next-generation weapons without the expensive research and development.

All of this leads us to President Trump trying to force China to play by the same rules the rest of the world has to.

Rex V. Willard,

Falconer