Political Agendas

In trying to parse out what both the Obama and Romney ads are attempting to say, I’ve stumbled upon mostly large political agendas accusing the other side of being hypocritical. The Obama white house is currently charging China with their “subsidies for auto parts” (NPR), while Romney claims they are also stealing our technology and intellectual property.

The Romney campaign has declared that Obama is letting U.S. jobs slip away by Chinese technology, while the Obama campaign retaliated with stating that Romney has simply sent China our jobs in manufacturing. Romney has ironically continued to invest in Chinese companies that are on the receiving ends of outsourcing from the U.S. Both sides of the political spectrum are blaming the other for letting China take advantage of us, and they are both doing so hypocritically.

However, the amount of manufacturing jobs has grown in the U.S., meaning that Obama hasn’t let the number of U.S. jobs be compromised by technology and/or outsourcing isn’t occurring to the extent we assume; neither are in the right.

Regardless of whose rhetoric is more correct, the very end of this article was most surprising to me. China’s new incoming president, Xi Jinping, is expected to prove that “he’s not soft on the United States” (NPR) while both U.S. political spectrums are arguing that they will be tougher on China. These two economies are the largest in the world, and if both become tougher towards the other, a trade war is likely to emerge. This toughness implies raised tariffs by the U.S., which will undoubtedly lead China to increase its tariffs as well. This story plays well in Krasner’s article, even though it is dated to 1976. When there is a hegemonic power such as the U.S., we experience free and open trade as other states depended on us and modeled our behavior. However, when hegemonic states decline or do not assert their power, trade becomes more restricted and closed off. As we see U.S. hegemony declining and other states arising, such as China and India, trade is likely to decline. Our world leadership is becoming ambiguous and Krasner has predicted our fate; as China and India grow, “these large but relatively less developed states are unlikely to accept an open trading structure” (Krasner, 322).

The issue we are currently facing with China needs to be addressed, not merely by campaign ads attacking the other side, but by acknowledging the threat and enacting policy to address it. If we allow ourselves to become caught up in our political agenda’s, we will epitomize what Coughlin directly claims; our protectionism will be a product of special interest and political favoritism that is not economically efficient.