The real issue is that we don't care to hurt ourselves enough in punishing the Chinese.
If they were some minor country that supplied all the world's bananas someone could potentially put together something like that, and we'd all live without bananas for a while.
But China makes just about everything, and not just cheap and simple stuff anymore.
In game theory (and experiments with real people) sometimes it makes sense to punish a misbehaving player even though it harms you yourself. It really does not seem like any country in the West is anywhere close to being willing to do that.
Australia is - its stood up to china - in a fairly minor way - demanding an investigation into the origins of covid 19. It's now involved in a tit for tat thats probably going to cost a lot.
Australia and Japan and a number of Asia-Pacific nations have joined the CPTPP - the reality is that the main driving force has been a mission to build a trading coalition in which the participating states can extricate themselves (and the supply chains of their businesses) from what has become a dependency on cheap Chinese goods/manufacture. Hot take - embracing the trans-pacific partnership is the best thing we can do to contain the rising influence and ambitions of Xi Jinping's China.
Indeed you can't trade with a partner who uses trade as a weapon - it does occur to me that china thinks the same of the US. We're just the smaller monkey getting hit down the line.
You're absolutely right. The thing America most needs to do is open her borders to truly free trade with the world, with the exception of Red China and a few other nations we want to topple. More than that, we need to build free trade areas (of which we are a part) in those areas, strengthening them further against her influence. We need everyone else on our side and that's a great way to make progress towards that goal.
Even on HN all anyone could talk about was how Trump's Trade War was hurting the economy. I thought the trade war was poorly executed but at the same time at least he was doing _something_.
Opposing Trump Trade War (TTW?) wasn't going to resurrect TPP wasn't going to resurrect TPP. I doubt Biden has the stomach for that either. Most people hate boondoggles, and we've noticed ISDS.
If they were some minor country that supplied all the world's bananas someone could potentially put together something like that, and we'd all live without bananas for a while.
But China makes just about everything, and not just cheap and simple stuff anymore.
In game theory (and experiments with real people) sometimes it makes sense to punish a misbehaving player even though it harms you yourself. It really does not seem like any country in the West is anywhere close to being willing to do that.