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Comment by gethoht | Hacker News Reader

"enormous government borrowing to fight covid and stimulate the economy" is by no means the reason the trade deficit is what it is or what it will be. The trade deficit is the product of 40 years of policy that promotes outsourcing and does little to nothing to protect domestic manufacturing. The only thing that is protected is shareholder profit and tax schemes that protect it at the expense of the rest of society.

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You are mistaking a cause, and effect here.

40 years of "misplaced policy," were a 40 years of actually very deliberate, and well placed policy called "monetary expansion."

Everything to facilitate the sale of US debt around the world, probably including a conscious effort to open door to foreign creditors at the expense of US industry was taken.

Chinese call this schema "You make all the work, and I make all money"

> foreign creditors at the expense of US industry was taken.

Inbound capital transfers aren't “at the expense of US industry”.

Loans, are not capital, by the definition.

Well we saw last election how even mentioning the idea of preferring american business makes you apparently a Nazi. For the past forty years, almost every single american president, regardless of party, has been more than happy to sell out the country's manufacturing base and the media applaud and reward them for it.

Not sure to what you are referring, but Biden’s “Buy American” executive order gives preference to American companies.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-sign-buy-...

I'm talking about how for the past four years, import tariffs, which are the same.as bidens executive order were castigated simply for the crime of having been initiated by a republican

Slapping tariffs on steel and lumber was incredibly ill conceived. We should protect industries that are economically or militarily important. But needlessly raising the cost of unrefined materials made zero sense

Steel and lumber are not militarily important? That's news to me.

Could you provide a citation for your first claim?

Definitely agree with the second, and you can add “CEO” as well.

My citation for the first claim is the trump campaign. Trump made china's trade with the us a centerpoint of both his campaigns and was called a racist for it. We were told it's just a dog whistle for white supremacy with little evidence, and we saw this line of reasoning continue through the covid pandemic, when reasonable theories, like the lab leak theory, which painted china in a bad light also earned mr trump accusations of racism.

The media cannot stand it when china is criticized. They have a long history of this, like how they hid he one child policy from Americans for years, and then openly persecuted the grad student who uncovered it

> The media cannot stand it when china is criticized.

The same media that has been reporting on Chinese suppression of Hong Kong protests and Uighurs in Xinjiang for several years? That media?

Yup tbat media. The media with a vested interest in ensuring there is always sensational news, but absolutely no interest that its own coverage ever lead to better outcomes.

The media has a vested interest to not only portray china as evil, but to make sure china stays that way, and to thwart american presidents from doing anything to limit china's growth, so that the American media has a powerful short-term source of profits for its owners.

This is not rocket science. Notice how the Hong Kong and Uighur stories are just designed to provoke outrage. The moment anyone suggests a solution or a potential action the US can take, the media fall silent or starts attacking, depending on how likely it is for that action to work.

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