Twenty-five years after President Bill Clinton’s catastrophic decision to normalize trade relations with Communist China, the data conclusively demonstrates how the liberal establishment’s promises of mutual prosperity and democratization have proven devastatingly false.
On October 10, 2000, Clinton signed the United States-China Relations Act, granting China permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) status and paving the way for their World Trade Organization (WTO) membership. The left’s academic elite assured Americans this would usher in an era of economic growth and liberal reforms in China. They were wrong on both counts.
Let’s examine the facts. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers claimed welcoming China into the global economic system would benefit both American and global economies. Clinton himself promised the policy would “advance our own economic interests.” These predictions have proven not just incorrect, but destructive to American prosperity.
The numbers tell the real story. America’s trade deficit with China skyrocketed from $84 billion in 2001 to an astronomical $418 billion by 2018 – a five-fold increase that has decimated American manufacturing communities. While liberal economists celebrated “global integration,” China’s share of world manufacturing output surged from 8% to 30% by 2020, effectively destroying millions of American jobs.
But the damage extends far beyond economics. The left’s fantasy that trade would democratize China has instead enabled a more powerful authoritarian state. Rather than embracing freedom, the Chinese Communist Party has:
– Intensified human rights violations
– Systematically stolen American intellectual property
– Imposed draconian regulations on U.S. businesses
– Expanded censorship and surveillance
– Strengthened its military capabilities with American dollars
This debacle exemplifies the dangerous combination of liberal naiveté about communism and globalist policies that prioritize theoretical economic models over American workers. The expert class that championed PNTR – including Biden administration officials like Lael Brainard – have never been held accountable for their catastrophically wrong predictions.
As America approaches a quarter-century of this failed policy, we must acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: the establishment’s promise that free trade would liberalize China was either willfully ignorant or deliberately deceptive. Either way, American workers, manufacturers, and communities have paid the price while China has emerged as America’s most formidable geopolitical adversary.
This anniversary serves as a stark reminder that when liberals promise prosperity through appeasement of communist regimes, American decline inevitably follows. The time has come to implement trade policies that put American interests first and recognize China as the strategic competitor it has always been.