hina’s growth has obvious and amazing benefits for the world,268 and in particular for America.

—Fareed Zakaria

Hey Fareed, would you like a little mustard with that hyperbole? And after you finish gushing about China, could you please answer this question:

How can any American journalist, business executive, consumer, politician, pundit, or scholar credibly defend a totalitarian regime that knowingly sells products that maim and kill us, hacks our computers to pirate our intellectual property, launches mercantilist attacks upon our economy to steal our jobs, uses planet Earth like a giant ashtray, treats its own workers like a bunch of slaves, and is arming itself to the teeth so it can sink our Navy and shoot our satellites out of the sky and have its way with the world?

That is a very good question. And it has no defensible answer. Yet every day across America a surprisingly large number of Apologists and Appeasers—from the likes of Fareed Zakaria, James Fallows, Tom Friedman, and Fred Hiatt to Nicholas Kristof, David Leonhardt, and Joseph Stiglitz—vigorously defend China against those who would press for long-overdue reforms.

In fact, the very existence of this unofficial “China Apologist Coalition” within America’s borders has an important political implication: We as a nation cannot effectively confront the Chinese government until we first clearly identify the Apologists and then fully refute what has become a veritable Tower of Babel against meaningful change in the U.S.–China relationship.

That’s the overarching purpose of this chapter, and, to begin, here’s a list of the six major players in the China Apologist Coalition. They are in no particular order and include the following:

• The “Democratize and Tame the Dragon” Liberals

• The “Damn the Mercantilist Torpedoes, Free Trade Ahead at Any Costs” Conservatives

• The Wall Street Banker Expat Spin Doctors

• The Washington Power Elite Appeasers

• The “World Is Flat” Globalization Gurus

• The Panda-Pandering Think Tanks

The “Democratize and Tame the Dragon” Liberals

President Clinton will close years of political and economic debate269 Tuesday and seal a major achievement of his administration by signing off on normalized trade with China...The move is designed to open China’s mammoth market to U.S. businesses and pave the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization...Clinton argued that bringing China into the global trade regime will help make Beijing a more responsible and accountable member of the world community.

—CNN

Distilled to its essence, the “Democratize the Dragon” Liberal argument for supporting China’s rise is this: We must “engage” the Dragon to tame it.

In this view, all that a Totalitarian China really needs to become a Democratic China is time—and a hefty dose of economic prosperity. By becoming more affluent, the argument goes, “they” will become just like “us”—that is, a civilized democracy that respects free speech, human rights, intellectual property, the rules of free trade, and the sanctity of the ballot box.

It is precisely this misguided argument that represents the tap root of America’s current economic problems with China. This is because the Clinton administration used it relentlessly in the late 1990s to support its policy of “engagement” with China and to press forward all the Congressional legislation that was needed to shoehorn China into the World Trade Organization in the year 2000.

Of course, history on this particular issue has proven to be a harsh mistress for President Clinton. For over the last decade, America has gotten just the opposite result promised by his administration’s policy of “engagement” with China.

Indeed, the more wealth that China’s economy has generated for its budding middle class, the more Chinese citizens have been willing to buy into the idea that totalitarianism is both necessary and desirable to keep the miracle growing. Professor Ming Xia has described the American Liberal’s total misread of the Asian neo-conservative mindset:

In the West, liberal Democrats often expect270 that the emerging market economy will create a sizeable middle class, who then will become the backbone of civil society and the driving force for democratization. But many Asian specialists have found that the dog does not bark in East Asia: Under the state-guided capitalism in East Asia, the middle class often depends on the state for employment (state functionaries and professionals) and resources (business people) and therefore is not active in opposing the state. This is the case in China, too. Not surprising, the middle class has been sided with neo-conservatism in China since the 1990s.

To put this in plain terms, far too many of the people of China seem far too willing to give up their free speech and human rights in exchange for the right and wherewithal to buy BMWs and Big Macs. That’s why Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington warned Liberals in the mid-1990s not to fully buy into the concept of engagement. Huntington’s warning is paraphrased in the Taiwan Review:

The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac.271 Indeed, the Chinese may eat Big Macs or even drive cars, but still not care to introduce popular sovereignty into their politics, particularly when they have thrived under government-driven, authoritarian capitalism.

In thinking through this problem, we want to make one thing abundantly clear: There is nothing inherently “Chinese” about totalitarianism and nothing that prevents the Chinese people from prospering in free societies. Indeed, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the worldwide Chinese Diaspora has proven this over and over.

In fact, the success of the Chinese people in other, more democratic systems is the result of pride, a strong work ethic, and a great respect for education. Sadly, however, the Communist Party’s propaganda machine has falsely convinced a significant portion of China—and much of the world—that it is the Communist Party’s “inspired leadership” that has produced China’s wealth.

So the next time you hear liberals insist we must engage the Dragon to tame it, remind them that engagement only works if China is willing to play by Western rules—not make up its own.

The “Damn the Mercantilist Torpedoes, Free Trade Ahead at Any Costs” Conservatives

As if the world economy wasn’t fragile enough,272 politicians in the U.S. and China seem intent on fighting an old-fashioned currency war. The U.S. is more wrong than China here, and it’s important to understand why, lest the two countries send the world back to the dark age of beggar-thy-neighbor currency protectionism.

—The Wall Street Journal

Lest anyone think we are picking unduly on the Left, guess what? At least one segment of America’s Right Wing is equally to blame.

The hallmark of these “Damn the Mercantilist Torpedoes, Free Trade Ahead at Any Costs” Conservatives is a blind faith in the principle of free trade no matter what kind of mercantilist and protectionist policies America’s trading partners adopt. However, as we painfully learned in Chapter 4, “Death to America’s Manufacturing Base,” free trade only benefits both trading partners if both play by the rules. Otherwise, and as is very much the case with the lopsided U.S.–China trade relationship, one country wins at the expense of the other’s income, jobs, manufacturing base, and prosperity.

What is perhaps most disconcerting about the “Free Trade Ahead at Any Costs” Conservatives is that it is virtually impossible to reason with them. These self-righteous ideologues seemingly condone any violation of free trade rules by China even as they insist that America continue to abide by those rules. Indeed, nowhere in this ideological mindset is the intellectual flexibility to distinguish, for example, between bad protectionist tariffs and quotas designed to close markets to foreigners versus legitimate measures of self-defense like countervailing duties in the presence of illegal Chinese government subsidies.

Just who exactly are we talking about here? A useful starting point is the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. For as the excerpt leading off this section illustrates, any time the topic of trade reform comes up, The Wall Street Journal and its stable of editorialists and Op-Ed thoroughbreds go on the attack using a tried-and-true propaganda formula.

This formula always begins with branding any defensive action taken against China as “protectionism.” After dropping the emotionally charged “P-word,” The Wall Street Journal then follows up with a dire warning of an impending trade war if the U.S. tries to defend itself against Chinese predation.

Of course, if real reform is a possibility, The Wall Street Journal will really try to scare us by referencing the role of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in triggering the Great Depression. It’s all so much cow manure, but it is undeniably potent propaganda that has served The Wall Street Journal’s “Free Trade Ahead at Any Costs” agenda well over the years.

Which is not to say that The Wall Street Journal is alone among the elite members of the financial press in its bashing of would-be China reformers. Regrettably, two other major global players—the daily Financial Times and the weekly Economist magazine—suffer from a similar ideological disposition to ignore China’s unfair trade practices for fear that cracking down on such practices might somehow undermine the global free-trade regime.

We would also be remiss if we did not include in this particular Apologist camp various conservative academics and members of several of the nation’s conservative think tanks. For example, Dan Griswold at the Cato Institute and Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation can be frequently heard playing this free trade tune. And Harvard’s Greg Mankiw and Stanford’s Ronald McKinnon can likewise be counted on to run up the free trade flag at the first sign of Congressional bills on topics like currency reform. However, what all these brittle ideologues don’t seem to realize is this:

China is doing far more harm to free trade as a long-term global proposition than any defensive crackdown on Chinese mercantilism and protectionism would ever entail.

The Wall Street Banker Expat Spin Doctors

The combined resources of Goldman Sachs, GSGH, and Gao Hua273 represent the largest team among international investment banks in China.

—Goldman Sachs website

While we do not question either the integrity or the motives of the “Democratize and Tame the Dragon” Liberals or “Free Trade Ahead at Any Costs” Conservatives—they fervently embrace their positions based on an ideological commitment—the same charitable assessment cannot, however, necessarily be granted to our third member of the China Apologist Coalition. These Wall Street Banker Expat Spin Doctors represent all the various big banks and financial services companies that have put up large shingles in China and that are now making money hand over fist—often at America’s expense. Of course, the signature strategy of this group is to use public interested arguments to advance their own financial interests.

Arguably, the worst offenders in this group are financial giants like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. They have set up some of the largest American shops in China, regularly hobnob with Chinese officials, and want to make sure that nothing rocks their golden boat.

Toward that end, they have employed two of the highest profile hired guns in the China debate—Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Stephen Roach, former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. Like The Wall Street Journal’s editorialists, each is quick to brand anyone who seeks reform with China a “protectionist” or “China basher”—and both enjoy rock star status in the government-run Chinese media. But what most distinguishes these two heavy hitters from the crowd is their own clever use of economic arguments and tortured use of statistics.

Consider, for example, Jim O’Neill. On the eve of a critical decision by the U.S. Treasury Department on Chinese currency manipulation, the Financial Times gave O’Neill a column to make the incredible claim that, “the renminbi [another term for the Chinese yuan] is very close to the price that it should be.”274 Right, Jim. And Mao Zedong was a capitalist.

Or how about this fear-mongering excerpt from the Beijing-run China Daily, which is ever-quick to give Stephen Roach some of its blood-stained ink:

Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach said Friday275 it was ironic for the US to blame China’s currency for its high unemployment rate and trade deficit, and trade sanctions on China would have a disastrous outcome for the United States...The US-China bilateral trade deficit has very little to do with the renminbi. It reflects the fact that America does not save and countries that do not save have to import surplus savings from abroad.

Wow. In a single paragraph, Roach shifts the entire blame to America for its huge trade deficit with China, uses fear-mongering to raise the specter of some vaguely defined “disastrous outcome,” and, most incredulously, claims that China’s undervalued currency is not really a factor.

Nor is there anything subtle about Roach. In response to a Nobel Laureate’s harsh criticism of an undervalued renminbi, Roach barked: “I think we should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman.”

Of course, when we read stuff like this, we always wonder why China is so unwilling to fairly value its currency if, as Roach claims, it really doesn’t provide a big boost to China’s economy. As for the claim, “America does not save,” Roach refuses to acknowledge the important role that China’s currency manipulation process plays in artificially suppressing America’s interest rates and thereby its savings rate.

What is perhaps most irksome about the likes of O’Neill and Roach is their willingness to torture statistics until they will say anything they want. Consider this claim Roach made in an interview in Barron’s:

Last year the U.S. ran trade deficits with 90 countries.276 China was the largest, but there were 89 others that account collectively for a lot more than our trade deficit with China.

Oh really, Mr. Roach. In fact, China alone accounts for a full 45% of the U.S. trade deficit in goods, leaving Roach’s other 89 countries to divide up the remaining 55% for an average of less than 1% each.

Even more to the point, China accounts for fully 75% of the U.S. deficit in goods when petroleum imports are taken out of the equation. Yet as the “Lee Atwater” of Dragonomics, Roach gets away with claiming other countries are a “lot more” responsible for America’s trade deficit when nothing could be further from the truth.

The broader point, of course, is that when you see Wall Street advocates like O’Neill and Roach arguing against meaningful reforms with China, just remember who they are working for and where their rice is being fried.

The Washington Power Elite Appeasers

I believe it is peace in our time.277

—Neville Chamberlain

I absolutely believe that China’s peaceful rise is good for the world,278 and it’s good for America.

—Barack Obama

Over the last decade, as China has had its way with the American economy, it hasn’t seemed to matter who sits in the White House, runs the Treasury Department, or holds the majority on Capitol Hill. Regardless of which political party is in power, the Washington Power Elite consensus has been to appease rather than confront the Dragon.

With President George Bush, the problem was largely ideological—as a free trader, he just couldn’t fathom the damage being done to the American manufacturing base by a mercantilist and protectionest China. Add to this Bush’s distraction with the war in Iraq, the War on Terror, and his obsession with the “evil doers,” and we wound up with eight years of a “see no China evil” policy from the most powerful man on the planet.

And here we must make a confession. Both of us had very high hopes that once we had a “regime change” in Washington in the 2008 election, America would move briskly down the road of meaningful reforms with China. However, with President Barack Obama, it has become all too clear that we have merely traded one Washington Power Elite Appeaser for another.

What is most troubling about all of this is that President Obama seems totally incapable of connecting the increasingly obvious dots between America’s economic malaise and China’s Weapons of Job Destruction. Perhaps it is because he believes he needs to keep borrowing Chinese money to finance his massive fiscal stimulus and budget deficits. Perhaps it is because he has surrounded himself with pro-China Cabinet members and advisors like the White House’s Jason Furman, Commerce Department Secretary Gary Locke, National Security Council Senior Director Jeffrey Bader, Treasury’s Lael Brainard, and State Department officials James Steinberg and Kurt Campbell.

Most ominously, perhaps it is that President Obama really and truly doesn’t understand the intricacies of global macroeconomics and, as a modern-day version of Neville Chamberlain, “absolutely believe(s)” that China’s “rise” will be “peaceful” and “good for America.” But either way, we in America have not been served well on the China question by the last two occupants of the White House.

And, given this tale of two presidents, it’s not surprising either that we have a similar tale of two Treasury secretaries—Bush’s Henry Paulson and Obama’s Timothy Geithner. Despite numerous opportunities—and overwhelming evidence!—both men have repeatedly refused to take one of the most important and direct steps this nation could possibly take on the way to meaningful trade reform with China, namely, to brand China a currency manipulator.

Of course, nobody really expected Hank Paulson to crack down on China’s currency bombings. After all, before becoming Treasury secretary, Paulson was one of the most important ringleaders of the Wall Street Banker Expat Spin Doctors. Indeed, as chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson made over 70 trips to China. Paulson’s China connection helped earn his firm hundreds of millions of dollars; and no way was this Wall Street insider going to bite the Beijing hand that had fed his Goldman Sachs comrades so well.

As for how Timothy Geithner turned so quickly into a China apologist, this is much more of a mystery. And boy, do we mean quick. In a “now you see it, now you don’t” New York minute, Geithner went from China reformer promising to brand China a currency manipulator during his confirmation hearing to China appeaser as soon as he sat down in the Treasury secretary’s office.

The “World Is Flat” Globalization Gurus

So far, America’s economic relationship with China has been successful and beneficial—and279 beneficial for both sides....

A factory work shift [in China] is typically 12 hours, usually with two breaks for meals (subsidized or free), six or seven days per week. Whenever the action lets up—if the assembly line is down for some reason, if a worker has spare time at a meal break—many people place their heads down on the table in front of them and appear to fall asleep instantly.

—James Fallows

How can an American intellectual like James Fallows reconcile his first statement with his second observation? This, too, is a good question; but if America’s Globalization Gurus are good at anything, it is the ability to sweep contradictions under the rug with Through the Looking Glass-like tales such as China’s heavy reliance on sweatshop labor somehow being “beneficial” to America and its workers.

As for who the Globalization Gurus are, they are the men (and occasional women) who write artful prose and inhabit the pages of prestigious national magazines and newspapers like the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and Time magazine. Besides Fallows, they go by names like Tom Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, and yes, the aforementioned Fareed Zakaria.

What these Pied Pipers of a Despairing Flat World have in common is the misbegotten belief that American workers and the companies that employ them no longer have the capability to be cost competitive with developing nations like China.

This council of despair is both a curious and counterfactual one because historically the United States has always been able to compete with lower-wage nations through its superior productivity advantage. With such an advantage, it doesn’t really matter if workers in Shenzhen or Saigon are earning 50 cents an hour and American workers are earning 30 times that if American workers—armed with newer technologies and superior capital equipment—can be 30 times more productive.

Of course, America’s problem today with China is that it doesn’t just have to compete with low wages. As we discussed at length in Chapter 4, American companies and their workers must also overcome China’s illegal export subsidies, currency manipulation, and numerous other Weapons of Job Destruction. Yet no American should ever doubt this abiding economic truth:

Given a level playing field with China or anybody else, American companies and their workers can compete with anyone in the world.

It is because of this abiding truth that real trade and currency reforms with a cheating China are so critical at this juncture in our history. Still, the Globalization Gurus refuse to acknowledge this truth and instead insist that American workers need not apply for manufacturing jobs because these jobs are all “inevitably” going to countries like China.

Our beef with these Globalization Gurus is not just that they are dead wrong. It is also that they use their positions of privilege and power at the top of the journalism food chain to mislead and, in some cases, outright lie to the American public in promotion of their globalization agenda. Consider, for example, this Fareed Zakaria rant against Chinese currency reform from his privileged perch at Time magazine:

On Sept. 29, the House of Representatives passed a bill280 [that] would punish China for keeping its currency undervalued by slapping tariffs on Chinese goods. Everyone seems to agree that it’s about time. But it isn’t. The bill is at best pointless posturing and at worst dangerous demagoguery. It won’t solve the problem it seeks to fix. More worrying, it is part of growing anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. that misses the real challenge of China’s next phase of development.

In fact, Beijing’s propaganda machine could not have churned out a more artful dodge. By arguing that the proposed currency reform bill would “punish China,” Zakaria first sets up China as a poor victim to be “slapped” by tariffs rather than as a mercantilist predator that America must defend itself against. Earth to Fareed: It’s against free trade rules to undervalue your currency by 40% simply to beggar your trading partners.

Zakaria next asserts that imposing countervailing duties to offset China’s undervalued currency “won’t solve the problem it seeks to fix.” Oh really? If the problem is getting China’s currency to fair value, of course such countervailing measures will work, and such duties would conveniently generate some badly needed revenues for the U.S. government until China gives up or plays fair.

Note also that the “it takes one to know one” Zakaria cleverly seeks to label anyone who supports trade reform as a practitioner of “dangerous demagoguery.” And what would a pro-Dragon Zakaria rant be without the assertion of China bashing and the rise of a “growing anti-Chinese sentiment.”

This is indeed masterful propaganda—and Time Warner pays Zakaria handsomely for it. But the bigger problem with pundits like Zakaria is that they simply don’t do real research to bolster their pro-China assertions.

Consider, for example, Zakaria’s characterization of the alleged sources of China’s cost advantage over American manufacturers in that very same Time magazine article. To Zakaria, it’s not just low wages. It’s also other factors such as “hospitality to business, compliant unions,281 and a hard-working labor force.”

Of course, there are all sorts of little things wrong with Zakaria’s analysis. In the “hospitality to business” category, Zakaria must believe that rampant corruption in China somehow improves the business climate. As for Zakaria’s term “compliant unions,” that’s certainly putting lipstick on a pig; Chinese labor unions exist in name only and God (and a waiting team of doctors) must come to help any labor organizer who tries to form a real bargaining unit. And regarding China’s “hard-working labor force,” if you mean that Americans are unwilling to work 12-hour days, 6 days a week with regulated toilet breaks in sweat shop conditions, yep, Fareed, you got us there.

But these are relatively little quibbles with Zakaria’s analysis of China’s production cost advantages. The really big problem with his argument is that he makes no mention whatsoever of the real sources of China’s competitive edge. These, of course, are the aforementioned weapons of job destruction that violate virtually every rule in the free trade book. Again, as documented in Chapter 4, they include China’s massive illegal export subsidies, its rampant currency manipulation, its blatant counterfeiting and piracy, its illegal policy of forced technology transfer, and so on. And in that “so on,” let’s not forget the cost advantage the Dragon’s factories gain from using China’s rivers and streams and the world’s atmosphere as giant waste disposal sites.

Just why does Zakaria choose to omit the most important sources of the Dragon’s competitive advantage besides its cheap labor? There are really only two possibilities.

The first is that Zakaria understands the power of these Weapons of Job Destruction but purposely chooses to ignore them. That raises issues of integrity.

The second possibility is that Zakaria truly doesn’t understand the economics of the U.S.–China trade relationship. That raises issues of credibility—and the real possibility that this ultra-light weight hot air pundit might truly float away some day.

Of course, at this point you may think we are picking on Fareed Zakaria, but we do so only because we believe he is not just one of the most influential of the Globalization Gurus but also its most irresponsible. To illustrate this last point, it is useful to evaluate one last argument of the Globalization Gurus that Zakaria has helped make popular. Here’s Zakaria’s argument in all of its Marie Antoinette “Let Bombay eat cake glory”: Even if China were to abandon its mercantilist ways, the rise in the cost of China’s exports would not reduce the U.S. trade deficit or increase the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Rather, such a level playing field would merely, in Zakaria’s words, “help other low-wage economies like Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh,282 which make many of the same goods as China.”

Of course, based on our own economic analyses, we believe Zakaria is dead wrong about this. As we have said, we believe the American companies and workers can compete with any in the world on a level playing field, particularly in manufacturing where automation and ingenuity often trump manual labor.

But suppose Zakaria is actually right. What he is saying is that America shouldn’t crack down on Chinese mercantilism because it really wouldn’t help us. It would only help a bunch of other Third World countries that nobody (or at least Fareed) presumably cares about—places around the world badly suffering from China’s beggar-thy-neighbor policies, like our good neighbor Mexico and Zakaria’s home country of India. Well, Fareed, that’s just plain cold. Have you forgotten your own roots and the slums of Bombay?

The Panda-Pandering Think Tanks

Those who would build a Great Wall of America283 to fend off China’s influence could end up jeopardizing everyone’s long-term peace and prosperity while doing little to improve prospects for political change in China.

—Albert Keidel, Atlantic Council

As a final member of the China Apologist Coalition, there are the various Panda-Pandering Think Tanks within and outside the Beltway that regularly thrust themselves into the middle of the China debate. We are not sure exactly why these think tanks are so predictably pro-China; and we don’t mean to question either their integrity or their motives. We do, however, want to identify the “usual suspects” in this group, if for no other reason than when you encounter their claims in the media, you can appropriately discount the data or opinion based on their sources.

Here, then, in no particular order, is our “short list” of the think tanks and analysts that we have found wanting on the perspicacity and insightfulness of their China coverage:

• Albert Keidel of the Atlantic Council

• Peter Bottelier and Doug Paal of the Carnegie Endowment

• Kenneth Lieberthal, Bob Rubin, and John Thornton of (and just about anyone else associated with) the Brookings Institute

• Charles Freeman of (and just about anyone else associated with) the Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Almost anyone associated with the Council on Foreign Relations (with Elizabeth Economy a notable exception)

• Ed Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute

Again, we do not wish to impugn the motives of these analysts or their institutes. We simply say, “Reader beware!”

Summarizing the China Apologist Coalition’s Playbook

To end this chapter, it’s useful to summarize the major “talking points” of the “China Apologist Coalition.” Whenever you see one or more of these arguments made in an Op-Ed article, editorial, speech, TV debate, or think tank report, you can be rest assured that the perpetrator is out to block meaningful reforms with China. Here, then, are some of the popular cons of the China apologists:

• The sine qua non—Accuse anyone who criticizes China of being a “China basher.”

• The Joe McCarthy—Brand anyone in favor of trade reform a “protectionist.”

• Let’s play on our fears—Warn that any attempt to defend America against Chinese Mercantilism and Protectionism will lead to a “trade war.”

• Make it a Stephen King horror novel—Reference the role of Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the Great Depression to create the impression a trade war with China will wreck the global economy.

• Reverse-reverse psychology—Warn that if you try to pressure Beijing into undertaking reforms, it will simply backfire.

• Stall for time after time—Insist “now” is not the time to undertake reforms—and keep making that argument year after year.

• Play the Walmart “poor people” card—Claim that any harm to the American manufacturing base is more than offset by the gains to consumers from the lower prices of cheap Chinese goods.

• Use Stephen Roach’s shell game—Claim that our trade deficit problem is a “multilateral” problem with the world rather than primarily a bilateral problem with China.

• Engage in self-loathing—Blame America’s low savings rate for the U.S.–China trade imbalance and not China’s mercantilist practices.

• Can I sell you the Brooklyn Bridge?—Claim that China’s currency really isn’t that undervalued—or not undervalued at all.

• Use the Marie Antoinette–Fareed Zakaria defense—Claim that trade reform with China won’t help the United States but just move trade to other low-cost countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Well, fool us once with these misrepresentations, then shame on the China apologists. But fool us repeatedly, and shame on us.