International Law

US to Intensify Pressures on the Yuan...No, Wait...Is This Deja Vu All Over Again?

We start this week off in a comic vein with a great joke I just read in WSJ:

The U.S. will try to intensify pressure further on China over its exchange-rate policy after a weekend meeting of the International Monetary Fund failed to produce an agreement on international currency movements.

As Mrs. Slocombe might say (in the first 15 seconds of this video), "Weak as Water!"

I have often wondered why the United States government remains as unwilling as ever to use tariffs or other similar measures to "encourage" the appreciation of the Yuan and to restrict Chinese imports into the US,

The dogma of "Free Trade" and the academic theories of global economy that float high above our daily lives remain in ascendancy. This, even though, and partly because of it, we no longer make our own clothes or shoes or the personal property that fills our homes and offices or the oil to heat these spaces or much of the vehicles we drive or the gas to run them or our much-vaunted computers or [fill in the blank]. It seems to me that Americans would rather be working manufacturing what they are to buy rather than be out of work and able to buy only that which they can not afford to make.

I still do not understand it. Why is the US so reluctant to play its power cards as ruthlessly and as intelligently as its competitors?

Full post as published by Asia Business Intelligence on October 11, 2010 (boomark / email).