As a law professor specializing in international trade law, I enjoyed reading the Nov. 27 articles in The Clarion-Ledger's Perspectives Section about U.S. trade with China ("Is free trade unbalanced?").
The articles presented two common views of China-one arguing that China is a menace that promotes harmful trade deficits with the U.S. and is engaged in a dangerous military build-up ("PRO: Chines trade deficits a threat to national security"), the other asserting that greater U.S. trade with China is beneficial ("CON: Free trade with China will create more U.S. jobs").
The articles made for good reading, and yet they ignored the most significant fact about U.S. trade relations with China: that whether we like it or not, the U.S. will not have a significant impact on China's trade policies in the long term.
U.S. on borrowed time
That is not necessarily a popular message here in the U.S. We like to tell ourselves that we are the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever seen — which is true. But that misses the point. China has 1.3 billion people, while we only have around 300 million.
As China develops a middle class, which it is, Chinese consumers will replace U.S. consumers as the primary purchasers of Chinese goods.
In terms of economic influence over China based on our purchasing power, the U.S. is living on borrowed time. We also flatter ourselves if we think that China cannot achieve its economic and military goals without significant U.S. involvement.
We live in a multilateral world in which non-U.S. companies can provide products and technology as good or better than ours. Even when the U.S. restricts the outflow of technologies, China mostly gets what it wants from overseas.
I saw this happen repeatedly when I practiced international trade law in Washington., D.C., and it is a focus of my scholarly research as well.
So what should we do? We must keep our markets open for Chinese products and simultaneously ease export control restrictions on many U.S. products and technologies to China. It has been proven that nations that follow open market principles benefit, even when trading partners do not reciprocate. So we cannot play tit-for-tat with China over market access.
Free trade often leads to painful structural adjustments to the U.S. economy and job losses, too; but these effects are unavoidable if the benefits of free trade are to be obtained.
How to prevent losses?
The question is not how we prevent these losses, but rather how we soften the blow for those affected through job training and financial support. Right now, we do not do enough of either.
We also need to acknowledge the fact that many U.S. trade policies do not deter Chinese development, but rather simply divert business abroad. In fact, if we eased our current controls on China, we would have greater export trade with China, and that would help our cause in trade discussions with China.
Whether we have trade deficits or job losses, or whether we like China's trade policies or not, is unfortunately of secondary importance. Instead, the U.S. must stop trying to play international trade cop with China and accept that we cannot rig the game in our favor. Only then will we be able to formulate an international trade strategy with China that can maximize our interests. Gregory W. Bowman is an assistant professor of law at Mississippi College School of Law in Jackson (www.law.mc.edu). Readers may write to him at 151 E. Griffith St., Jackson MS 39201 or by e-mail at bowman@mc.edu.
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