I think this all started as some kind of national security consensus that we would help China by having free trade with them. It worked in that millions of Chi

I think this all started as some kind of national security consensus that we would help China by having free trade with them. It worked in that millions of Chinese have been uplifted (of course this is vast oversimplification: they helped themselves and many other countries also trade with them), but has definitely failed if we ever thought to make the Chinese government less authoritarian as a side effect. It was definitely paid for by American workers. I don't know what economists were smoking when they thought the entire blue collar workforce would be retrained into better jobs, but that's the theory they kept forwarding. I've also heard that this has helped America by keeping inflation low. What they mean when they say "inflation" is almost always "wage inflation". You can see the mindset in the Covid relief debates- God Forbid we give people more money than the slave wages they get from corporations- they might not work! Corporations might have to pay more in wages!