Winners don’t boycott - they WIN

Hillary Clinton has called upon President Bush to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing. This controversial step, she states, would teach China a lesson about human rights, especially in view of the recent Chinese crackdown in Tibet and Chinese support of a genocidal regime, in exchange for natural resources, in the Sudan.

I hope this approach of boycotting and effectively sticking our head in the sand does indicate the approach Senator Clinton would take as President. America’s problem with China is not their treatment of their own people, but how we are allowing them to treat America.While human rights should and must always be a prime concern in US foreign policy, our problems with China are much more immediate and dangerous. China has been allowed, even encouraged, to achieve their calculated and spectacularly success program of hollowing out and consuming America’s industrial backbone. We all know that “Made in China” tags far outnumber those of “Made in the USA.” We have allowed China to make us so deeply dependent on their loans that Chinese that they could single-handedly sink our country into an economic depression if they demanded to be repaid.

Our problem is that we have allowed China to make Americans addicts, as once the Chinese were opium, of their cheap, subsidized goods bought on their easy credit. But there is no free lunch in this world, and with each passing day we sink further into dependancy on China for our goods and money. Indeed, our problems with China are not the well-known brutality of that totalitarian regime. Our problem is that the Chinese are building a mighty empire on the weakening back of America. Our politicians, all the while, are complaining about human rights. If we do not compete with China and WIN in global economics, we will not be in a position to fight for human rights abroad at all. We will, instead, be fighting to secure human rights from China right here at home. So, Senator Clinton, we can’t hide behind human rights, we need to win economically. Economic wars are not won by boycotts; they are won by establishing a level playing field for American companies, by forcing China to stop making their goods artificially cheap though playing games with their currency, and by investing in education and infrastructure.

Go America, Go!

Are we living in the Chinese Century?

Can America stay ahead of China? My inclination is to say yes, however many powerful trajectories indicate that America needs to wake up fast or find itself far behind before we know it. 

Ever the optimist on the topic, I became seriously concerned while shopping for a new laptop.  At Best Buy, not only was I unable to find a laptop NOT made in China - forget about one made in America - I could not find ANYTHING made in America. Nothing. Nothing in BestBuy is made in America!

It’s not just Best Buy. I challenge you to find ANY consumer electronics made in this country. Forget TV’s and the like, we not making comptures, cell phones, Ipod’s…nothing at all. 

Well what do we make? We make cars, although the Big 3 loose market share daily and barely stay out of bankruptcy, we make planes, even as Boeing is outsoursing much of the actual manufacturing abroad, but aside from these, what are we really making in terms of hard goods? I don’t know.

We make movies and cheeseburgers  - no one can touch us there. We also make software which is important. We are totally dominant in internet applications and developing new products, like Ipods, which, in  turn, are produced in China.

How can we remain on top if we can’t make anything?

Therein lies the issue. It’s not that we can’t, it’s that we’ve made a deal with the devil. We have chosen to allow our markets to be flooded with artifically cheap Chinese goods in the phiryic hope of “engaging” China. We have “engaged” them and they have hollowed us out.

The question for the moment is whether we have the WILL to renew America as a first rate power. It’s not a question of CAN we, but WILL we.

More on this later…