Trump’s Tariffs Tackle Clinton’s China Carnage

April 7, 2025 by J.B. Shurk

Twenty-five years ago, President Clinton used his remaining time in office to advocate on China’s behalf. He argued that the communist regime should be admitted to the World Trade Organization and that the United States should grant the totalitarian state permanent normal trade relations. Critics of China pointed to the Tiananmen Square Massacre the decade before as ample reason to deny it any economic reward. Critics of Clinton pointed to allegations that his political campaign had accepted illicit contributions from China as ample reason to doubt the president’s motives. Still, Clinton got what he wanted, and China became a member of the WTO the very next year.

In truth, Clinton was only a loud voice representing a conglomerate of international business interests that had long desired to grow profits by tapping into China’s abundant supply of slave labor. They don’t teach that nugget of truth to the kiddies suffering through public school indoctrination. The Marxists who control the teachers’ unions and write the textbooks advance the common narrative that Clinton’s efforts to welcome China into the planet’s most lucrative trade clubs were part of a larger, well intentioned foreign policy plan to westernize China and make the communist country more like us. Would you believe that thousands of American businesses moved their operations to China over the last two-plus decades because they were eager to liberalize the communist nation, institute massive workplace regulations, utilize more expensive “green” energies, and constantly hike China’s minimum wage? Me neither.

Slave labor was always the point. Building things in a totalitarian nation that brutalizes striking workers and imprisons agitators in labor camps was always the point. Moving operations to a country that doesn’t give a fig about protecting the environment or workers’ health was always the point. The foreign policy crowd can pretend that enriching the Chinese Communist Party with global trade was some brilliant gambit to turn China into Norway, but the economic titans who pushed that public propaganda were actually looking for cheap workers with no rights. They weren’t interested in liberating a billion Chinese; they were interested in liberating themselves from expensive environmental and labor regulations in the United States. They offshored their workforces to take advantage of slavery by proxy.

Until Clinton helped to secure China’s membership in the WTO, the communist nation was on the ropes. It could barely feed its people. It had a third-world economy. Despite the United Kingdom’s handover of Hong Kong in ’97, the Chinese Communist Party remained an international pariah after its slaughter of students protesting for democracy. There was no reason to reward China’s human rights abuses by elevating it on the international stage. There was no reason to suspect that a dangerous new “Cold War” would develop between a wealthy United States and an impoverished China unless the former offered the latter normalized trade relations. Had Clinton and his Western allies maintained economic pressure on China, it is likely that there would be no Chinese Communist Party today. It would be buried in an unmarked grave alongside Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — which would have been fitting, since each totalitarian system murdered and disposed of millions the same way.

Instead, the Chinese Communist Party has grown only more powerful over the last twenty-five years. China has become the planet’s premier manufacturing hub. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum globalists are so envious of China’s technocratic surveillance that they regularly promote programs meant to remake the West in China’s image. Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, the now-deceased Charlie Munger, was a huge fan of the way Chinese communists controlled their economy.

The U.S. trade deficit with China was around five billion dollars in the mid-’80s. It has spiked to nearly four hundred billion dollars today! Excluding services and energy, mining, and agricultural products, the U.S. is running a manufacturing deficit of roughly half a trillion dollars with China every year. Since Clinton and the foreign policy gurus opened America’s doors to Chinese goods, the United States has outsourced most of its manufacturing to its chief geopolitical adversary.

Now, that’s a brilliant foreign policy! Three decades ago, China’s economy was fragile, and its future was uncertain. And though many economists would argue that China’s economy is still fragile today (centrally controlled communist systems always are), the Chinese Communist Party has never been more powerful. It has the largest military in the world, is expanding its naval and hybrid warfare capabilities at an exponential pace, and is becoming a real threat to American military supremacy.

The China trade enthusiasts told us that offshoring American manufacturing jobs to the other side of the world would prevent a future devastating conflict with China and transform the communist regime into friendly business partners who would grow to appreciate the benefits of freedom and democracy. Instead, U.S. politicians and business leaders destroyed America’s industrial and manufacturing self-sufficiency while transferring trillions of dollars of wealth to China’s military.

Well done, “expert” class! What will you think of next — maybe fund reckless bioweapon experiments in a leaky Chinese laboratory? D’oh! — the “best and brightest” already have.

I get so angry when I see abandoned factories and dilapidated business districts across the United States. These places are not just reminders of lost jobs; they’re the rusty, dusty remains of lost lives. They weren’t just opportunities for a paycheck; they were opportunities for families to build happy homes and take care of their children. They gave people purpose. They united local communities. They were the backbone of the middle class.

Then came NAFTA, and millions of blue-collar jobs disappeared to Mexico and Central America. When Clinton and his friends partnered with the Chinese Communist Party, America’s working class was hollowed out. Oh, sure, Clinton promised betrayed workers that they would all soon have high-paying jobs in a new service sector that would magically appear. It turned out that Wall Street bankers got those jobs. Main Street workers were even passed over for over-the-phone customer service positions; the same people who sent America’s best dirty jobs to China figured out they could save a bundle by redirecting business calls to sweatshops in India. Long before corporate news reporters hectored fired mineworkers to “learn to code,” America’s most obnoxious “free traders” were telling fired factory workers that they’d all have high-paying “service jobs” in the “new economy.” They got welfare checks, deadly drugs, and decades of empty promises instead.

The end result of all this offshoring was the growth of an American wasteland. Politicians do their best to hide the evidence. They turn crumbling workshops and warehouses into high-end apartments. They build highways over forgotten neighborhoods. Entire towns in parts of the South and Midwest are all but erased from online maps. Like sepulchers in a cemetery overrun with weeds, the temples once housing America’s vibrant industry lie in ruins. Boarded-up buildings are skeletal monuments to the workingman’s better days.

Why? So that national companies could become international behemoths? So that global firms on Wall Street could strip America down like a stolen car and sell the parts? So that Charlie Munger’s friends could make a fortune on Chinese investments and Klaus Schwab’s friends could push the West toward a technocratic dystopia more easily controlled? So that the wealthiest in America could extract every last dollar from the mortgaged, indebted middle class?

NAFTA was sold as a “free trade” agreement that would slow inflation, decrease national debt, and end illegal immigration (because workers would remain south of the border). Normalized trade relations with China were sold as a policy that would diminish the national security threat of the Chinese Communist Party. How did those promises turn out?

Building an American future begins with revitalizing America’s builders. Combined with deregulation, energy production, and tax cuts, that’s what Trump’s tariffs will do.