PaPaPeng
Though there are differences too, but you are right that there are some good analogies to what protectionists in the US were saying in the 1980's about Japan. Currency exchnage rates is one of them, and I suspect that point is not lost on the Chinese. While the Yen wasn't a fixed rate currency but it the rate got as a high as roughly 250 yen per dollar in the mid 1980's. Critics of Ronald Reagan lambasted him for allowing the dollar to be so strong because of the because of the "unfair" trade advantage it created for Japan. Conservative economists of the era argued that the strong dollar was in fact good for the US and bad for Japan because it meant that Japan would give Americans more widgets for the same amount of money and that utlimately the dollars had to flow back the the US anyway since the US was the only place you could spend dollars in the US (a bit of a simplifications to say that you can only spend them in the US, but you get the idea). They argued that by keeping the dollar strong the the Japanese would give the US more widgets per dollar upfront and that the imbalance would cause natural downward pressure on the dollar that by the time that the dollars were ultimatelty repatriated to the US that because of the by-then depreciated dollar that the US would be giving the Japanese fewer widgest in return for each dollar (so there US would be turning a profit). Basically the theory goes that the country is running a trade suprplus who has a bigger long term problem than the country running the deficit because of the time factory - if your currency is going to depreciate anyway it's better that it depreciates after you spend your money than before. Whether history bore that out depends to a large degree of the politics of the person doing the interpeting. But what happened is that after the Plaza Accord the dollar declined rapidly but in a stable fashion. Some intially cited this as one of the contributing factors in the 1987 stock market crash, but despite that event the US experience only a minor economic slowdown and it didn't happen abrupty. But was happened in Japan was far less pretty, they seemed to do just fine, even gain strength, up until 1991 or 1992 when their economy could no longer bear the weight of hotel rooms in Tokyo being US$200 per night and thier wages suddenly being just as high as in the States. Since then, Japan's economy has been pretty stagnant.
If history is a guide, what the Americans should be wishing for is for the Chinese to keep their currency pegged at a low value for as long as possible. As long as it goes on, the Chinese are tangible goods with a longterm economic value exceeding the longterm economic value of the dollars that the are receiving. Utilimately market pressures will force the Yuan to come in line with the dollar anyway, regardless of what any artifical exhance rate mechanicism governments put in place, all the articifical rates do is delay the inevetable. But by delaying that inevetability, the Chinese are extending the period of time in which they continue to give Americans more than what they pay for. There are ways that can turn out to be a negative scenario for the Americans, but it's difficult not to notice what this same type of gambit did to Japan.
Schiavo: Overlooked in the ShadowsI don't think there is such a notion of betweenness in this case. The ``decisions between husband and wife'' was actually one "decision" --- a casual remark that Teresa...
What Bush thinks about all of this, if anything, is a bit hard to tell. He has gotten caught up in some protectionism (for instance he put steel tarrifs in place that he ultimately was forced to repeal) but each protectionist episode seemed to be an attempt to pander to voters in a specific State (as opposed to being part of an overall protectionist philosophy). Who seems to be pushing protectionism (and yes, China bashing) is CNN and in particular Lou Dobbs. CNN gives Lou Dobbs an hour of prime time every day to call free trade "idiotic" and to moan about the "exporting of American jobs". This rhetoric does not seem to resonate at all with Republicans, and especially not with the so-called neoconservatives. The opposite really, those are the people who Lou Dobbs is at war with. It seems to be the left wingers who accepts Dobb's arguments, though they do very cautiously because of fear that they will alienate ethhnic minorities who are on an important voting block for the Democrat party. For the most part Bush's philosophy seems to be that the governemt should have only a pbuttive role in the economy. Whether this is out of a belief in laisee faire capitalism our out of neglect is something I will leave partisans to debate.
