FutureofUSChinaTrade.com: Recent Episodes
USChinaTrade
FutureofUSChinaTrade.com is a website offering insight, data, and news about trade between the U.S. and China. The site, a joint venture of Arizona State University and The Kearny Alliance, is dedicated to fostering a dialogue on the U.S./China relationship and – ultimately – to informing the policy debate in Washington D.C. and Beijing.
I’m deeply disappointed with where we are and I blame the big traders, China and the U.S. in particular.
So the reality is that because the WTO is a rules-based system, the image of the Anglo-American model, it is structurally incompatible with the rising economic systems of the world.
So I think it’s important to have a stabilizing effect like the WTO, as imperfect as it is, to at least try to bring people together as opposed to letting each nation go out on its own.
That’s one of our rules here is to try and provide some guidance in terms of rules of what you can and cannot do.
It’s amazing to me, given that the WTO has no power whatsoever and can’t force a country to do anything, that countries generally live up to their obligations under the WTO.
China gained the benefits of the WTO – which is to get access to markets – but they also got protection from the WTO.
Jigar Shah, President of the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE) and co-founder of SunEdison, talks about the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping trade case against China. He argues that if China loses the case, that won’t bring solar panel manufacturing back to the U.S. But it will increase the price of solar panels, which will reduce demand and cost American jobs in installation, distribution, sales and marketing, and other downstream activities. An interview with ChinaGlobalTrade.com Director Molly Castelazo, recorded April 2012.
FutureofUSChinaTrade.com director Molly Castelazo recently spoke with Geng Xiao, Director of Columbia Global Centers / East Asia in Beijing, about his vision of the future of trade between the U.S. and China. He explained that the enormous productivity gains that China has been realizing (as it transitions from agriculture to industry) have put incredible upward pressure on interest rates, inflation, and exchange rates. Chinese policymakers have responded by fixing those rates, a solution Xiao says is unsustainable.
On November 7, 2011, FutureofUSChinaTrade.com director Molly Castelazo spoke with Derek Scissors, a research fellow for economics in The Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center, about his view that there is no real connection between the value of the yuan and U.S. unemployment. According to Derek, “American unemployment is naturally determined by American policies, not Chinese.”
On November 8, 2011, FutureofUSChinaTrade.com director Molly Castelazo spoke with Dan Ikenson, associate director of the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, about what he sees as a lack of recent evidence to support the premise of an inverse relationship between the value of the yuan and the size of the bilateral U.S.-China trade deficit.
On November 9, 2011, FutureofUSChinaTrade.com director Molly Castelazo spoke with Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington D.C., about his view on the size of the trade balance distortion caused by China’s manipulation of the value of the yuan ($400-500 billion). In other words, Joseph contends, a relatively undervalued yuan leads to U.S. exports $400-500 billion lower than they would otherwise be – which translates, he said, into 3 million or more lost U.S. jobs.
On November 11, 2011, FutureofUSChinaTrade.com director Molly Castelazo spoke with Gil Kaplan, a partner at the Washington D.C. law firm King & Spalding in the International Trade Practice Group, about Gil’s view on the size of the distortion caused by an undervalued yuan, which he called “devastating” for particular industries in the U.S. Gil explained how the U.S. could apply existing countervailing duties laws to U.S. imports of Chinese-made products, and what that would mean for U.S. manufacturers.
On October 26, 2011, FutureofUSChinaTrade.com director Molly Castelazo caught up with Alan Tonelson, Research Fellow at the U.S. Business & Industry Council Educational Foundation, to talk about China’s currency policy, which Tonelson says keeps the RMB significantly undervalued relative to the dollar and – more importantly – creates tremendous and completely artificial competitive disadvantages for U.S.-made products.
FutureofUSChinaTrade.com spoke with Michael Pettis, finance professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, about his vision of the future of trade between the U.S. and China. He argued that China needs to switch its growth model – from one dependent on investment and trade surplus to one driven by domestic consumption. Yet that transition will be a difficult one and there isn’t yet consensus in Beijing that now is the time. “It’s very difficult to change the rules of the game when you’re winning,” Michael said.
FutureofUSChinaTrade.com spoke with Nobel Laureate economist Ed Prescott about his vision of the future of trade between the U.S. and China. He explained the importance of economic openness and the role of multinational corporations in producing gains from “trade.”
We spoke with expert commentator Jim Jarrett about his vision of the future of trade between the U.S. and China. He argued that “fundamentally, this isn’t a China issue; it’s a U.S. competitiveness issue,” then offered his advice on ways that the U.S. can be a more effective contender in what he calls the “global competition for jobs.”
"China is investing in themselves. Without investment you don’t have real income growth. Without real income growth the standard of living starts to go down. So I’m worried."