Why isn’t the trade war a bipartisan issue?

Globalization has caused the “giant sucking sound” of jobs Perot predicted. The cause may be equal parts cheap labor and automation. But the effects are obvious: 1. the decline of the industrial Midwest, 2. the amount of carbon emissions resulting from globalization, and 3. the failure of the CCP to reform itself.

I’m a diehard free-trader, but I’m also flabbergasted that we can’t pass a carbon tax.

Chinese merchant vessels are the main source of plastic in the ocean. FedEx’s airline fuel and China’s coal-fired plants emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases. (Not to mention the fast fashion consumerism driven by race-to-the-bottom economics.)

Shouldn’t Pelosi’s America love the idea of tariffs set out to capture the insane negative externalities of flying toothpaste halfway around the world? Shouldn’t Pelosi’s America love the idea of punishing one of the most consistent and vocal abusers of human rights?

Meanwhile, American businesses have been scorned by the Chinese government. Facebook isn’t allowed to offer Instagram the way TikTok is allowed to offer video-sharing here in the states. Thousands of entrepreneurs have seen their businesses decline in the face of cheap global competition. Millions of workers have lost their jobs. And the Chinese people seem no more free from the CCP today than they did 30 years ago.

Shouldn’t Reagan’s America love the idea of tariffs set out to equalize the economic playing field? Shouldn’t Reagan’s America love the idea of punishing a communist, authoritarian government?

Why is China not the most bipartisan issue in America today? I look around and sense we are all much closer in ideology than we’re being led to believe.

Perhaps it is, and China will become the new Soviet-style enemy that we’ve been missing for the past decade. Perhaps the best-case scenario is China paints us as evil, we paint China as evil, and our countries enter a Green Innovation race, to see who can stop ruining our planet first.