This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, February 10th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Is the United States headed inevitably toward a trade war with China?

Perhaps so, and it might be because so much of the control of trade

has been foolishly delegated to the White House.

Dan Eekinson, Director of Cato Institute's Trade Policy Studies, comments.

For the purposes of understanding sort of where we are now with respect to China, what

has the U.S. China relationship look like with respect to trade for the past 20, 30 years?

I say since 1989, in the was there were calls for trying to isolate them, contain them, and other calls for engagement

and the latter prevailed.

And the Bush administration decided that if we opened up to China, if we engage them, they would become more like us, their

economy would grow, civil and political liberties would follow the economic liberties and the

world would be better off.

It was also strategically a concern that if the United States were to impose sanctions,

that they would be ceding the field to Germans and French and other companies from other countries.

So there was a practical reason to stay engaged.

And for 20 years from 1989 until 2009, the relationship worked pretty well.

I mean, there were lots of frictions, of course, as the United States accommodated China's rise.

But U.S. policy was the balance of two interests basically. You had the

import competing industries and unions on one side, clamoring for protection,

clamoring to keep China's pace of growth limited.

And on the other side was the U.S. multinational community.

...