Anti-China sentiment in the U.S., protectionism & nationalism

A fear mongering video which seems to predict the coming fall of the United Stated alongside the rise of China had become a bit of a sensation. It is very high-quality, and its nationalist/xenophobic message is shortly (but nicely) critiqued here. It has also spawned a parody which signifigantly alters the political message. This add in particular, and the anti-China/pro-China retoric in the United States in gerneal, is critiqued quite well in one of my favorite China watcher blogs.

There have also been some very xenophobic and anti-Chinese attack adds paid by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as a part of the U.S. election. One add implies that living outside the United States is somehow bad (one of the last things we need is fewer U.S. citizens going aborad and experiencing the greater world). These attack adds are nicely analyzed here. Indeed, since seeing the Obama presidency, taking a class in which the professor stressed the inefficiency of the U.S. political process, and now seeing some of the lunacy of this election, I am pretty much fed up with the current United Stated style of democracy, which I think consists of insults, the loud stating of claims without significant factual basis, and one's favorite color of a binary option. Seeing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's homepage just amplifies my view of U.S. democracy as a one-on-one fight between two giants in which money matters more than anything else. I am gonna have to get dual citizenship in another country someday.

There is a brief call for logic and sanity when thinking about international economics here. Indeed, the very way that international trade and the assembly of products works nowadays makes traditional ideas of national origin rather obsolete. Using the example of Apple's iPod (how ubiquitous can this product and brand become?), Shikha Dalmia writes:

"Think about the IPod, for instance. It is designed in America and its 451 parts are made in dozens of different countries. But just because it is finally assembled in China, it officially counts as a Chinese import and therefore a contributor to America’s trade deficit — never mind that the Chinese add only $4 to the IPod’s $150 final value. Imposing duties on IPods to slash the deficit, then, won’t just cost Chinese jobs  in Beijing assembly plants, but American jobs in Cupertino (Apple’s headquarters) computer labs."

A recent WTO speech by Pascal Lamy focused on a nearly identical topic, and I consider it well worth reading in full as a reminder to not get caught up in the rhetoric of economically protectionist and politically nationalist arguments.