Challenging China by Sam Kaplan

Author:Sam Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

CHAPTER 6

A New World Order with Chinese Characteristics

Twenty years ago, in a room on the 37th floor of the Sheraton Hotel during the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle, I looked down at Donald Trump supporters running rampant on the streets of Seattle as the then Governor of Washington State, later to become U.S. Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, announced a state of emergency on the television. It was a surreal moment. Earlier that morning, with our seven-months-pregnant colleague, we’d braved the line of protesters who had taken over the streets as we attempted to get to one of the WTO meetings. The protesters, who were violent from the beginning, despite how they were depicted in the media at the time and in books and movies since, shoved our pregnant colleague as she tried to cross the street.

I was one of the staff of the local host committee helping to organize the WTO meetings. At one point just a few days before the meetings, I caused a U.S. State Department official to cry. Ordinarily, I would feel bad about causing someone to weep openly, but if you knew what the State Department official had done, you might weep yourself. Trump supporters controlled the streets that day and have set the agenda for trade policy ever since. It took the protesters 17 years to gain complete control of the levers of power when they elected Donald Trump and made their dreams and wishes official U.S. trade policy. Pulling out of trade agreements, increasing tariffs on foe and ally alike, trashing the WTO, and tearing down the post-World War II, post-Cold War liberal economic order have all been accomplished. Donald Trump won in 1999 and cashed in his policy winnings after his election, thus opening the door for China to re-make the world order with Chinese characteristics. It is not clear that a successor administration will rebuild and evolve it.

Are You Down with TPP?

As discussed earlier, Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, but it wasn’t like he was alone in his disdain for it. The Democratic Party was against it, and their presidential candidate forthrightly opposed the deal during her campaign, even though she was part of the administration that negotiated the agreement. In fact, TPP was a tool of the Obama Administration to counter China’s efforts to impose its economic system on the world. Yes, the ostensible purpose of the TPP is to bring together Asia-Pacific countries with the hope of increasing trade and instilling labor and environmental standards into such trade, but China was pointedly not a part of the TPP. It was not invited to be a part of the TPP. This was not an accident.

President Obama explained the reason for the TPP in his 2015 State of the Union Address. He said, “…China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage.”1 He then went on to ask for trade promotion authority

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