★ 05/18/2020
Wall Street Journal reporters Davis and Wei deliver an essential look at recent U.S.-Chinese relations, up through the January 2020 trade deal. Going back to the beginnings of China’s economic rise in the 1980s, they trace the deterioration in the country’s relationship with the U.S., which Beijing officials once likened to an “old married couple who needed each other, even though they might bicker.” Davis and Wei remind readers that Bill Clinton, “now seen as the great globalizer,” initially ran as an advocate for reviving U.S. manufacturing and as a harsh critic of China’s human-rights record, only to forge close economic ties to the country once in office. The potentially dry subject matter is made vivid by the authors’ references to relevant aspects of their family backgrounds—Wei's as the granddaughter of a veteran of Mao’s Long March, and Davis’s as the son of a factory owner who encountered intractable competition from Asian manufacturing—and by portraits of such key players as Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro. They end by listing options for the next U.S. president, whether Trump or Joe Biden, to take on China, including more multilateral use of tariffs abroad, and greater use of tariffs at home. This is required reading for anyone concerned about America’s economic future. (June)
