When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution, whether it’s conventional air water and soil pollution or climate change, it is very often low-income communities and communities of color. The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very same communities.
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The Case for Free Trade
• Its beneficiaries have proven they can get adequate financing from private banks.
EXIM’s charter expires at the end of 2026. The agency will close automatically unless Congress and the President decide to extend it. Closing EXIM should be one of the next Administration’s easiest decisions.
Adopting a Multi-Pronged China Strategy. An effective American policy toward China needs to take a realistic view of the country, its leaders, their strengths, and the serious challenges they face. It should be comprehensive and flexible. A threatened CCP is dangerous, perhaps now more than at any time since Mao Tse-Tung, as Xi Jinping continues to use strong-arm tactics to consolidate his power and saber-rattling to challenge the international order.
At the same time, recent revelations about China’s official statistics overstating its GDP by 30 percent track well with other problems that were already known.” These include one of the world’s worst demographic aging curves thanks to China’s one-child policy; a population that may already be declining; an unsustainable debt load that is already causing problems; countless failed boondoggles, from empty cities to its underwhelming Belt-and-Road Initiative, that are wasting significant resources; Xi Jinping’s authoritarian turn; increasing state control of the economy; anda zero-COVID policy that has sabotaged the economy and driven away foreign investment.”
America has its problems, but it is in better shape than China on nearly every measure, especially in the long run. While the facts on the ground should inoculate the next Administration against the most strident China fearmongering circulating in the media and in Washington, that does not mean that the government in Beijing is no threat to American interests. The question is: What should we do about it?
A serious China policy will require American policymakers to integrate doctrines, institutional prerogatives, expertise, and realistic objectives. Traditional Cabinet-level bureaucracies like those at the Departments of Defense, State, and Commerce will need to work together to pursue a comprehensive American strategy. Scores of incremental, narrowly targeted policies are necessary. They will not make for good soundbites on cable news, and many will operate slowly and out of sight from most news cycles even as progress is made.
An effective China policy must also allow for adaptation because the CCP will not sit idly by. As people react to developments, America needs flexible options. Trade isolationism is inherently inflexible because it reduces the number of contact points with China.
This is a tougher political sell than loud, simplistic jeremiads, but going the extra mile to solve these difficult coordination problems is vital to America’s interests. Trade and engagement with China are necessary if we are to contain the threats that China poses to its neighbors and to the U.S. The next Administration should: