By , ,
Published July 15, 2015
America’s Secretaries of State and Treasury are in China, pleading with the Chinese to devalue their currency, so our products can compete with theirs throughout the world. They will also ask for Chinese assistance in defusing the situation on the Korean Peninsula, by pressuring an increasingly belligerent North Korea.
Arriving in Shanghai, Secretary Clinton said, "For trade to work in any economy and for it to produce the benefits we know it can, there must be a level playing field where domestic and international companies can compete freely and openly.” She wants China to rein in Pyongyang, which is completely dependent on Chinese aid to keep their people fed.
Tell me, Mrs. Clinton, do you really expect the Chinese will “level the playing field” so we can compete with them? That they will reverse course in relations with North Korea? Why should they do us any favors? What leverage do we have? Because negotiating without leverage isn’t negotiating, it’s begging.
The leverage is in the opposite direction. We need the Chinese to lend us money so we can continue our spending binge.
Rather than tighten our belts and cut back on government spending now that times are tough, the Obama administration has put it on steroids. The United States is spending money we don’t have, lots of it, and borrowing it from the Chinese. Just how much longer will the Chinese be willing to pay for Obamacare, Wall Street bailouts, and sweetheart labor union deals without expecting something in return?
It’s already started. Recently, a top assistant to Secretary Clinton apologized to the Chinese for Arizona’s immigration law. Last week a Chinese Finance Minister scolded us over our indebtedness saying, “the United States needs to take a hard look at its own fiscal situation in the light of what has happened in Europe.”
What’s next? President Obama, with his usual eloquence, gave us the answer in his commencement address at West Point last weekend. He acknowledged that “at no time in human history has a nation of diminished economic vitality maintained its military and political primacy.”
To quote columnist Charles Krauthammer, “decline is a choice.” Mr. President, is that where you’re taking us?
Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland is a Fox News National Security Analyst and host of FoxNews.com's DefCon 3. She is a Distinguished Adviser to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. She wrote Secretary of Defense Weinberger’s November 1984 "Principles of War Speech" which laid out the Weinberger Doctrine. Be sure to watch "K.T." every Monday at 10 a.m. on FoxNews.com's "DefCon3" already one of the Web's most watched national security programs.
Fox Forum is on Twitter. Follow us @fxnopinion.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/from-bad-to-worse-in-asia