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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

Yes. That's the basis for this, from the article:

> In effect, US policymakers put diplomacy before industrial development at home, offering the massive American consumer market as a carrot to encourage other countries to open up their economies to multinational investment. Then, thanks to the popular narrative that automation was responsible for job losses in manufacturing, American leaders tended to dismiss the threat of foreign competition to a thriving manufacturing industry and minimize its importance to the overall health of the US economy.

It started with Nixon's 1972 visit to China. Engineered by Kissinger.

However, it's arguable that it helped prevent WWIII, so hey.

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There's a word that describes the transfer of wealth from one country to another to achieve a desireable political outcome. It's called tribute. On a personal level it's called bribery.

It could have been the best option at the time, especially with nuclear weapons in the mix.

However it's also very convenient that those deciding to pay the tribute or bribe (government bigwigs) did not have to pay out of their own pockets. In fact they were able to skim a portion off for themselves.

That's a great insight. I had thought of it as a policy decision, one aspect of the post-WWII globalization initiative. Encouraging trade and international connections, to reduce the risk of war.

But yes, it also looks like tribute.

Edit: > In fact they were able to skim a portion off for themselves.

Walmart was represented at those talks :)

I've heard that Mao offered 200 million young Chinese women, but Nixon passed, I guess.

When the desirable outcome is the hope of avoiding a war, the word isn't "tribute". It's "appeasement".

Businesses don’t trade altruistically. They do it because they benefit from the transaction. We do make straight-up donations around the world in the form of foreign/humanitarian aid, typically to buy stability in weak regimes rather than to appease powerful ones. There’s nothing going on here that can reasonably be labeled a tribute. Aid given in exchange for nuclear disarmament is probably the closest.

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