I just read a news article about the US footwear company Timberland, and its plans to export gear to China by opening 70 stores there. This is good news for the US/China trade imbalance, but one thing which struck me as "not to cool" is the fact that there are such different rules for exporting to Chine, vs. imported stuff which comes here.

Timberland feels that it must price it's goods 15 - 20 % higher in China than in other markets. The reasons are that China has a high tax on imported goods, and there is a high risk that the imported goods will be illegally copied by Chinese companies.

I am not the biggest fan of uninhibited Globalization and completely free trade, and this is one reason why. China wants it free when they are selling, but has both protectionist rules when buying, and lack of enforcement in protecting foreign countries rights. This "one way street" is not globalism in the good sense, and we need to stick up for ourselves in the world of world trade, and not be stupid.

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Steve Gallagher
Maple Corner, Vermont, USA
www.govern.us

Yes, the two countries are quite intertwined economically speaking. To fight would cause hardship. To work together would be good. This assumes we want to focus on economics, and to preserve the global economy....

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Steve Gallagher
Maple Corner, Vermont, USA
www.govern.us

but nobody cares..

I've been righting articles about COSCO and their underselling of american markets through reversed trade restriction for years...

Guess everyone wants to work for china, or halliburton...

Your barking up the wrong tree...all the people I've encountered here are Culture Warriors...not politically minded people...

There worried about trivial things, voyeristic things, like gay marriage, and bashing "Neo-cons".....

I suppose you have ideas then?
The issues get brought up from time to time. A lot of people don't have much to say. Why? It's a big problem but not many of us have much of an idea what to do about it. The good thing about the hot-button issues is that they pretty much are solved through argument.
This is an issue that cannot be solved through argument. Every choice you can make has costs- and those costs are not good. Engagement with China made sense from the neoliberal perspective. Getting China into the global economy would give us leverage to change it. Our reluctance to threaten China with sanctions and make use of this leverage is allowing China to get away with murder... without even treating its people decently.
But we're not likely to see a use of that leverage. The same lobbying groups that fought for engagement are fighting to make sure that they can have access to cheap labor and manufactured goods. And the Unions are the only big lobby fighting against, a lobby that is getting weaker every day. Meanwhile China's military is growing.
It's not good. But it isn't an issue that can be solved by argument. It requires finding a large enough, motivated enough, and economically powerful enough lobby to fight the big business interest and then getting American consumers to accept the sacrifices that would come if we had to follow through with sanctions. I hate to say it, but I'm not optimistic about either of those.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside