Exactly. I have, in my mind, this image of a river of money flowing from the US to China for counterfeit goods. They results in the destruction of businesses and jobs as well as taking a significant amount of money out of our economy and into theirs.
That depends on a very narrow definition of it. Quite often smaller European companies get destroyed because some US megacorp steals the IP and manages to stall the legal process until the small company goes bankrupt.
This is true. I happens here in the US just as well. Yet this is a different issue.
In one case you have a massive number of companies in China stealing IP and copying products while their government looks the other way.
In the other case you have an asymmetric legal situation. Even a small company can bring a mega corp to it's knees due to IP theft. Patents are powerful things when used correctly.
Yet, we are talking about very different things here. China --a nation-- has a massive product cloning and IP theft industry. This is happening at an astounding scale under a government that almost encourages it.
There are plenty of stories of Kickstarter projects that run into clones before their funding completes. This can be devastating for an entrepreneur and their small company. It all points back to China.
If you visit the links I posted, you will see that other countries suffer, too.
I don't deny that some US businesses have predatory practices, and that is wrong, but it doesn't come close to the wholesale IP theft we are seeing, and doesn't make it any less wrong.
If you claim it's a "huge part of the US economy", you should back this up with some evidence.
Historically, it's been a common strategy for emerging economies to rise up through that process. Even the US did it at one time, and it's probably a big reason why it has such a strong IP position today.
