We're Trading More Than Goods
Our economic policies and trade preferences are not morally neutral.
Imagine living in a despotic, Communist regime. You cannot practice your faith freely. You are prohibited from instructing your children in it. There can be no religious symbols on the exterior of your church. Family members have been arrested for “smuggling” Bibles into the country. International human rights organizations keep reporting on your plight, but little changes. There are reports that political and religious prisoners are having their organs harvested.
Then, the largest free country in the world announces an increased trade partnership with your government, because the goods provided by the poor working conditions in your country are cheap. Such is the relationship between the United States and China.
Our building of a greater relationship with China is not a neutral act even from a strategic perspective. So much of our industry is already reliant on that country: pharmaceuticals, vaccines, food additives, processed foods, clothing, and of course, electronic devices. This reduces our ability to engage in meaningful pressure to reform.
Some might object, opining that our situation is already dire and thus that it’s “already too late” to do anything meaningful with regard to China. But surely a situation’s grimness does not justify or necessitate its worsening. Increasingly, the American policy toward China has been to establish friendly relations as if they were a free country that shared a similar moral code.
President Trump has rightly warned about America’s relationship with China since the 1990s, at times advocating for restricted trade between our nations to allow American (and even European) countries to compete. Unfortunately, those warnings seem like mere echoes of a different era. Over the past week, an American delegation to China resulted in promises of an increased trade relationship, without any mention of their despotism.
China is known for a host of abuses, even if you limit your scope of criticism to the narrow field of economic unfairness. China’s economic model has long been intertwined with currency manipulation, prison labor, forced labor among political and religious prisoners, and worker conditions so poor that meaningful redress is often impossible. Thus, even from a pragmatic standard, equal relations with China inherently disfavor companies that try to make moral decisions and which therefore operate in countries that treat their citizens well.
We are currently in a farcical moment wherein China is our biggest trading partner yet we actively prosecute Chinese spies on American soil. An American mayor was charged by the FBI just this week. As someone who works in media, I can say that stories involving the arrest of Chinese spies are so frequent as to be tiresome, yet they are rarely covered by the mainstream press.
If we step back and consider how we ought to relate to such a country, admitting that decades of problematic political decisions have left us in an unnecessarily vulnerable situation, then we could make at least some assertions:
Let us not discard the most vulnerable in those countries, such as the Christians who are being persecuted by an evil regime. We must recognize that when we seek a greater alliance with such a government without a recognition of glaring moral issues, we cast aside those who are suffering for righteousness’ sake.
Trade is inherently formative of some dependency. As such, the willingness to increase trade beyond our current status represents an extended hand, in trust. If we do not even have verbal acknowledgement of moral reform, let us not endanger ourselves with further reliance.
There are some who wish to separate trade from morality completely, as if fiscal decisions have no bearing on our social standing or upon those who are suffering under the boot of a tyrannical regime. Unfortunately, that cannot be true. Trade relationships help to bolster fellow countries, both in terms of their economy and their perceived social status among other nations.
Further, we have a tendency in modern discourse to pretend that all nation-states have equal, if different, moral structures. Yet it is not the case that “all cultures are beautiful” or that all regimes are equally acceptable. There are times when we must assert that certain behaviors are so egregious that we cannot pretend them away or act as friends to their perpetrators. In doing so, we don’t just assert what is good, we act in a way that is good. Acting with indifference toward evils, especially in a way that encourages them to continue, is an evil act in itself.
Every dollar spent is ultimately a vote for the systems and institutions that produce the goods we consume. We know this. It’s why we like to fund small businesses and we shudder at funding the goliaths that are counter to our values. The issue does not change when the producers are entire countries. Instead, the harm is magnified and the body count is sometimes literal.