The China problem is of our own doing, of course. Up until Trump nobody had any interest in addressing it. I'll just say nobody before him took this on becaus

The China problem is of our own doing, of course. Up until Trump nobody had any interest in addressing it. I'll just say nobody before him took this on because of the potential for political suicide. Love or hate him (I'm +/- around neutral, hate how he presents the presidency, like most of what he is actually doing when he is not busy saying stupid things) forcing a realignment of China is a good idea. This had to be done 25 years ago, when it would have been far easier to accomplish. Attempting this today is equivalent to not detecting cancer early enough for a simple operation to extract it fully with minimal consequences. Instead, we wait until it has metastasized and nearly have to kill the patient in an attempt to cure him. Notice my use of the word "attempt"...because there are no guarantees. The China problem, I think, can be boiled down to a few important line items: - Intellectual property theft - Currency manipulation - Terrible disregard of the environment - Objectionable labor practices - Predatory practices with foreign entities operating in China - Fraud in regulatory testing and standards (UL/CE/TUV mark from China testing means nothing) - Lackluster of participation in foreign aid (for the second largest economy it is embarrassing) - Asymmetric property ownership laws - Abuse of the global postal system (free shipping from China because the US taxpayers subsidize their packages within the us to the tune of US $500 million per year) There's probably more, though I think these are some of the main points. If any other economy behaved this way they would be universally scolded in around the world. If the US, Germany, France or the UK behaved this way we would have massive marches all over the world. China does this and more and people, for the most part, are either oblivious to it or don't care. The problem with this is that they are sacrificing their own jobs and their kid's futures for their inaction. I think the value of playing with reasonably similar rules is that one entity can't destroy other players by using out of the norm methods to destroy them and then gain supremacy. This is why we have such things as antitrust and monopoly laws. This is why such methods as price fixing and bribery are illegal in the US and Europe. This is why we respect intellectual property, fight for humane labor practices, respect safety testing of the products we use and help less fortunate nations to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and generally speaking. China is almost the diametric opposite of this. And for that they likely deserve a bit of a reality check today. Non an easy problem to fix. Others have allowed this cancer to metastasize for decades. To fix it today you have to be a complete a--hole and go for broke. It looks like the job fits the guy in the White House. Not sure if he will succeed. The other problem is that, in western democracies, leaders and some policies tend to only survive term limits and election cycles, while in China they know they can stay the course for decades.