Chinas trade manipulations will devastate us its time to fight back

A tidal wave of cheap Chinese imports floods the national market.Industries reel, companies crumble and factories close their doors for good.

The livelihoods of countless families disintegrate.This could be a description of the original “China Shock,” the long-term result of the United States’ policy of “free trade” with China, which cost America 2.4 million jobs between 1999 and 2011.But it also describes what countries across the globe are facing right now: a massive glut of vital industrial inputs and high-value goods, courtesy of Chinese overproduction.Just look at Latin America, where a sudden inundation of Chinese imports has dragged Brazil’s chemical industry to its lowest point on record and driven Chile’s sole remaining steel mill out of business.Look at Asia, where India and Vietnam are investigating a variety of market disruptions.

Or look at Europe, where UK machinery manufacturers have been forced to sell their products at a loss and Chinese-made automobiles have seized a third of the EU’s electric vehicle market in less than five years.This “China Shock 2.0” could devastate a slew of national economies.And its impacts could be even “more fundamental” than those of the first China Shock, experts say, because they involve industries more critical to countries’ survival.Gone are the days when China’s manufacturing ambitions seemed limited to cheap toys and apparel.

Today, Beijing openly touts its aims to position China as the sole supplier of commodities and high-tech goods that other countries would cease to function without.And yet, across the globe, elites invested in the economic status quo are determined to ..

.do nothing.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez are examples.

Their nations’ auto industries rake in short-term profits from car sales in China and Chinese investments in their own EV companies.In other words, they are dependent on good terms with Beijing.To no one’s surpr...