If leaders of other countries ever really want to weaken the United States, they should embrace collectivism. It’s that simple.
Which is but a small reminder that imports never hurt the United States. When others are doing for us, and imports are a tangible sign of just that, we’re quite a bit more able to do what we do best.
Sadly, what’s accepted wisdom about the genius of work divided increasingly goes out the window when the workers Americans collaborate with have the temerity to be from China. Somehow imports from China harm us, if conservatives are to believed.
Take Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution. In a recent letter-to-the-editor Berkowitz wrote that “The Communist Party’s ambition to achieve worldwide economic dominance, bring nations on every continent under its sway, and create a world order favorable to authoritarianism presents the chief external threat to American freedom.”
Seemingly ignored by Berkowitz is that “economic dominance” and “communist” have nothing to do with each other as the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and the China of old attest. Considering “economic dominance” as applied to the China of the 1990s to the present, Berkowitz is presumably referencing the growing capability of the Chinese people to do for us (think export) so that we can do for them. Which is a very good and peaceful thing, contra Berkowitz.
At present, Apple sells roughly a fifth of its iPhones in China, GM sells more cars in China than it does in North America, there are 7,000+ Starbucks in China, 5,500 McDonald’s on the way to 10,000 in 2028, not to mention that the world’s most valuable company (Nvidia) attains a not insignificant portion of its valuation from sales in China. In other words, the more that the Chinese export to us the richer the U.S.’s most enterprising people and corporations become.
Berkowitz would give the impression of exporting as a predatory notion that weakens the importer, but the U.S. economy has soared in concert with China’s embrace of the profit motive. Predictably so. Something about work divided driving wondrous individual specialization.
It’s worth keeping in mind in light of Berkowitz’s odd assertion that China is “the chief external threat to American freedom.” Berkowitz can’t have it both ways. A nation populated by people feverishly producing for the rest of the world can’t be a threat to that same world’s freedom, including U.S. freedom. The latter is not really an argument as much as it’s a statement of the obvious: exactly because imports power soaring specialization among those exported to, it can only be said that China’s goal of “economic dominance” is a sign of empowerment for the rest of the world, not world domination as Berkowitz imagines.
Looked at in a national security sense, defense funding doesn’t come from Pluto as much as it’s a consequence of a government’s taxable access to the production of its people. Each day that the Chinese people get up and go to work Americans become richer and more productive.
All of which calls for a rewording of the “economic dominance” that Berkowitz portrays negatively. In truth, there’s no such thing. The ability to export is borne of a people’s demonstrated ability to meet and lead the needs of others. Applied to the Chinese, or for that matter the U.S., they and we don’t “dominate” as much as we serve. And in serving, we strengthen those around us. Always.
Which is further evidence that China not only isn’t communist, it’s not even out to “bring nations on every continent under its sway” as Berkowitz contends. If it were, the CCP wouldn’t allow the people to produce so brilliantly for the rest of the world.
