Trump’s trade war is Misguided: We need to fight China’s ideology
President Trump has been keen on fighting Beijing on the economic front. He continues to raise tariffs on China. Most recently, the White House announced that duties will be raised on $250 billion in Chinese goodsfrom 25% to 30% starting on Oct. 1. Additionally, tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goodsthat are slated to start on Sept. 1 will now be at 15% rather than the previously announced 10%.
However, even if Trump’s trade war is successful, China may still have the upper hand. This is because the US needs to fight China’s ideology not China’s economy. There are two reasons why America needs to fight China’s communist ideology. The first reason is that jobs being lost to Chinese workers is a natural part of the globalization process. Fighting it is futile. The second reason is that China has continued to grow more aggressive in peddling the communist party’s propaganda while also taking measures to ensure the communist party’s permanent control. I’ll expand on these two concerns throughout this article.
The Futility in Fighting Globalization
Trump campaigned on the promise to bring factories back to America. However, promising to bring factories back to America shows a gross misunderstanding of the process of globalization. The factory jobs aren’t coming back to the US because the jobs in the American economy have shifted to different sectors due to the comparative advantage of producing certain products now belonging to China.
In other words, China has become more efficient at producing certain goods as the US economy began to increase employment in industries outside of factory jobs. It’s a much better idea to retrain former factory workers so they can work in more in-demand fields than to try to bring factory jobs back to the US. This is because companies don’t have as much incentives to produce goods in the US.
The only way for companies to have incentives to produce goods in the US would be to create artificially low wages which could only happen through tariffs. Tariffs can create artificially low wages by increasing the cost of employing workers in other countries since the product produced by the foreign workers would have to be shipped into the US. This is what Trump is trying to do now and it actually creates economic inefficiency and may not even work. As a matter of fact, not many companies have brought their factories back to the US. Overall, the battle against globalization is futile.
The Communist Party’s Push for Total Control
China’s communist party already has an enormous amount of control. For example, Beijing has the ability to manipulate and spread disinformation on a variety of social media websitesand is currently developing a massive surveillance systemthat rates citizens on their trustworthiness and behavior. However, the Chinese government has been working to increase their control through various methods while also working hard to sell their communist ideology.
Some ways the Chinese government has been trying to spread their Marxist-Leninist ideology and increase their control is through re-education camps. Re-education camps are basically a more socially correct way of saying interment camps. The Communist Party of China uses these internment camps to brainwash prisoners into renouncing their religion. Beijing has also been increasingly spreading their ideology in schools. Last year, the Communist Party of China and the Ministry of Education released joint guidelines asking faculty to prepare for intensifying ideological training. Prior to this, during 2015, the Chinese government began emphasizing ideological education at universities by highlighting the importance of universities championing the Chinese dream, socialist core values, and Marxism.
Although Beijing has yet to try to spread this ideology outside of China, it would not be surprising if they do. The reason it would not be surprising is because one of the central beliefs in communism is that other countries will become communist. If the Chinese government comes to the realization that they should help other countries become communist, then the US could have another Cold War on their hands.
America Needs to be Proactive
Although China’s economic growth may be threatening to the US, the US-China trade war is largely a waste of time. In the end, the trade war will mostly hurt average everyday consumers and will make the economies of both the US and China more inefficient. In light of this, it’s a much better idea to go to war against China’s dangerous communist ideology before the Chinese government begins to spread the ideology outside of China.
