China's Effect on U.S. economy

[maxx]

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/heari...IN101010.shtml
"... The bill passed by the House on Oct. 1,[H.R. 2378] to authorize the imposition of countervailing import duties against specific foreign products subsidized by a deliberately undervalued currency, is a useful initial response..."

So what is the Senate doing with this bill? Will McConnell allow the Republicans to vote for this?

[canuck]

I hope the lobbying effort from the middlemen who have raked in from the chinese trade will not squash this bill. There should be equalization duty paid on most everything China produces since the labor costs are 10 times less than the US and Canada. 20 times less in India. Let them depend less on our consumerism and let us depend less on their cheap products. We need to spend on infrastructure like they do, we need to pay more taxes to finance this, and we need to be more frugal, learn to save money, etc... If this goes through there will be inflation but we may be more resilient and resourceful in the long run.

That is a hard sell. They are now better equipped, more modern, well educated, they own theUS debt, so the turnaround for North America will be quite difficult. The alternative is lower wages in the middle to long range and of course retooling our industries will be hard. It's funny how for so long the IMF and the World Bank stood for capitalism as the triumph of democracy. Now the most successful moneymaker of all is a communist dictatorship.

[Papasito]

China is kicking our butt without firing a shot.
And we enabled them to do it.
Our decline has been the fuel to thier rise.

[oladub]

The United States government is humiliating our country by begging a foreign nation to modify it's own monitary policy so we can pretend that everything is ok. Chinese students have laughed at Geithner. Considering that the Chinese are concerned about saving face, this showed their contempt for Geithner and his policies. The Chinese government works for Chinese interests and is not interested in propping up our sagging regime.

To ask China to let it's currency float is asking for higher inflation in the US because everything we import from China will cost more. China will have more valuable money so they will accelerate their purchases of the world's resources. That should bring about $100/barrel oil quickly. The Obama administration should consider the consequences of what it asks for. The inflation will help pay off federal debt however.

My preference would be to get out of NAFTA, GATT, and OPIC arrangements and serve notice to the world that we will institute across the board tariffs unless special case by case deals could be worked out such as our auto trade agreement with Canada which allows an equal value of autos to be sold across borders duty free. I would offset the tariffs with income tax cuts so it would be revenue neutral.