People like bringing up good old Ronald Reagan, who had faults and was simplistic about the economy, but Clinton (as mr Perot presciently warmed us) truly did drive the stake through the blue collar workers back and left them where we are today, moribund looking for salvation.
Yes, mr Clinton, you did it. It was done eloquently and with the backing of neoliberal elites, and the then mainstream media. The sophisticated approach is why he doesn’t get the vilification Reagan does amongst the working class. But it’s long deserved.
But it didn't happen in a vacuum. Cheap shipping certainly wouldn't be possible without containerization and improvements in logistics, but the new system only made sense when scaled up to giant ships (fuel and crew size efficiency), which in turn only became feasable when ships could quickly/easily onload and offload at multiple ports in multiple countries, without quarantine/ security/ customs delays at each port.
You could say it's a chicken & egg situation, but the scale of the containerization age only began to make sense in the context of relaxed regulation and efficient import/export policy.
Also, it wasn't a case of non-existant regulation racing to catch up with a booming new technology (ala the internet or Uber/Lyft). International trade regulation has been around since before, well, nations were even a thing. It's the original bureaucracy. The regulation had to be addressed first, or at least simultaneously. Which to me is as impressive, if not moreso- cutting through a worldwide rats nest of bureaucratic red tape in so little time. (Regardless of if you agree with the resulting policy.)
Conflict of interests doesn't begin to describe it...
1. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/nov/11/money-to-cli...
>China's elites decided against that dream
For them I think it was much more a nightmare than a dream.
Eventually the book, "Silent Invasion", found another publisher: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36586726-silent-invasion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_embargo#People%27s_Republ...
This is an assumption that is worth inspecting. While it is true that China's technological capabilities have increased dramatically since the Clinton presidency, it's also true that their economy has improved, lifting millions of Chinese into the middle class, and their trade with the U.S. has grown dramatically.
Trade is a stabilizing influence on international relations. Our huge volume of trade with China is why Trump is having a "trade war" with China today, not a real war. Trade wars are better in every way compared to a shooting war. But a trade war can only exist between nations that share significant trade.
Is our relationship with China perfect? No. Agree with the tactics or not (I don't, personally [1]), but the Trump administration is responding to real domestic concerns about how China operates.
Is China's governance and approach to their citizens' civil rights perfect? Definitely not!
But: it is a desirable goal is grow the international economy. Doing so lifts people out of poverty, gives them a reason to seek peace, and creates beneficial large-scale effects like improving efficiency and slowing population growth.
Growing the global economy means that other nations will prosper and develop their technologies, which include military technologies. One particular deal with China--bad as it was--was not the lynchpin of nuclear detente; China had the means to wipe the U.S. off the globe the day Clinton took office.
They don't want to. That preference for mutually prosperous peace is far more important to the national security of the U.S. than the details of a particular military deal.
The article depicts the Clinton administration as having "a fear of offending China." What they actually had (and share with a large number of other people) is a belief that China does not have to lose, or be "contained", for the U.S. to keep winning. In fact, everything we know about economic growth says that the U.S. will win more if we trade productively with growing nations.
[1] IMO the TPP with the U.S. in it would have been more effective at shaping China's behavior than the current U.S. tariffs, with fewer negative side-effects in the U.S.
