Again if you want to negotiate with China over IP, you start by joining and strengthening the TPP so that the TPP can then confront China about the rules of the globalization game in the Pacific. You do not blow up the TPP on day 1, then follow that by ginning up fake complaints about NAFTA that you then walk away from, and then think there is a chance you will win something substantive and valuable that is against China's interest.

My problem with this whole line of columns from Marty is tha it ignores the fact that Trump is Trump, and has a history and a practice of not understanding the issues and then folding:

Martin Feldstein: Will the US Capitulate to China?: "It’s beginning to look like US President Donald Trump will yield to the Chinese in America’s trade conflict with China.... The most important problem... is that the Chinese are stealing US firms’ technology.... US firms that want to do business in China are required to have a Chinese partner and to share their technology.... That... is explicitly forbidden by World Trade Organization rules.... Second, the Chinese use the Internet to enter the computer systems of US firms and steal technology and blueprints.... Such cyber theft has resumed, presumably because state-owned companies and others have the ability to reach into the computer systems of US firms... The key issue is technology theft. Unless the Chinese agree to stop stealing technology, and the two sides devise a way to enforce that agreement, the US will not have achieved anything useful from Trump’s tariffs...


#noted

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