The Times writes a story about Germany expanding economic ties with China, but frames them as being prompted by America seeking to "isolate" China. At no point is there evidence that America is trying to isolate China, it's simply taken as a given that recent efforts by the Biden Administration to strengthen American manufacturing is an effort to "isolate" America leading trade partner.
For me, I keep coming to a phrase that I (rightly or wrongly) attribute to economist Dani Rodrik: naïve globalization. Rodrik's argument is that the Bretton Woods framework of reduced tariffs and an easing of trade restrictions gave way to a naïve belief that if a little globalization was good, then more would be better. This led to GATT being replaced by the WTO, and the basic idea that any form of economic nationalism is bad.
One byproduct of the last eight years has been to question that assumption, and those questions have come both from Trumpist populists and Biden-style old schoolers. The combination of Covid supply chain issues and Russian militarism has made the Biden Administration focus on bringing certain critical industries home. It's fine for China (or Vietnam or India) to make our t-shirts, but it's an economic and military vulnerability for our supply of microchips to be dependent on global trade networks.
For a certain segment of the business community - and I'm guessing the business press by extension - any retreat from full throttle globalism is therefore isolationist? That doesn't make sense. The CHIPs Act is not isolating China, it's strengthening American supply chains and bringing jobs home. Trump's insight about globalization and its impact on American blue collar workers isn't bad, just because Trump had it. If Democrats don't take measures to help blue collar workers, then we will continue to see grievance politics dominate our country and warp our policies.
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