I read with amusement and frustration recently that certain America tech voices including a former Google CEO were calling for "Bifurcation" of U.S.-China tech. That is, they want us to have our own technical standards and infrastructure. They want a "firewall" or "decoupling" of sorts between our tech and theirs. This is because they have discovered that China "does not play by the same rules" and does not respect intellectual property rights. She subsidizes both espionage and key sectors that give them strategic advantage. They didn't mention it, but a few years ago China was caught sneaking stealth microchips into their products that would allow them to remotely hack a wide array of devices. It may be best, they have decided, if they have their tech sphere and we have ours.
None of them called this "protectionism". None of them suggested that what has falsely been called "free trade" has been taken too far. None of them dared breath anything about "nationalism" or suggested that globalism might not always be the best idea. But that's what they were talking about. They just made up another label, "bifurcation" for what anti-globalists have been suggesting all along. We need firewalls and back-ups and we should not be vitally linked to an unfree economy. If we are, then when they go down, we go down with them. Or worse, they don't go down. We go down because they take us down, by using our open system against us while theirs stays tightly controlled.
You can't have "free trade" with unfree people. In 1850, cotton from the American South probably seemed like a bargain - and it was for those who were a part of the transaction. But this was at the expense of other parties. The slave labor used to produce it for example. Those who have argued for "free trade" with Communist China are the same kind of people who would have argued for "free trade" with the American South in 1850. They might be outraged and offended at that comparison, but I am outraged and offended at what they have done to our economy and our middle class, and how they have strengthened the position of the ruthless gangsters who run the world's largest slave-labor camp.
Imagine there was a product called an Omelassian Box. You buy it and take it home, and the first time you open it, it contains at least twice as much as you paid for it. Sounds like a great product. But then you learn that the money in the box is somehow obtained from other people who are worse off than you. The winners are the people who make the box and you. But the box is not a net gain for your society. It's gifts come at the expense of others.
All sorts of excuses are made to justify using 'free' trade strategies that are really analogous to the Omelassian Box. People want that easy money. But if you don't start putting more and more of your own money towards buying that box, you quickly wind up in the part of the population that is victimized by it. The more money you have, and pour into the purchase of more boxes, the richer you get and the poorer everyone else gets.
One may argue that the slaves are at least better off than they would be if there were no jobs for them to take. But this argument ignores the reality that it is their masters who are most strengthened by such exploitation. If the slaves are helped a penny and their masters a pound, they they are a penny richer but almost a pound less free.
So called "free" trade with nations that are not free societies is a fantasy. The trade is only free between merchant and master, not worker and master. And such trade has hidden costs that we cannot afford. Even if we could, we still should not do it on moral grounds. "Bifurcation" with such economies may cost us something in the short run, but it is insurance against entangling our own fortunes with tyrants that when sleeping Justice finally awakes, we go down with them.
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