I'm Justin Logan, the Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute,

joined by my colleague Clark Packard.

Clark, why don't you introduce yourself?

That name's Clark Packard.

I'm a research fellow at the Cato Institute.

Most of my work focuses on the U.S.-China economic relationship.

Great. So we are here with a mandate to figure out the U.S. China relationship in about 25 or 30 minutes.

So I think that's an auspicious setup. But, I mean, I think you can, you know, we could do 25 or 30 hours on the U.S.ina relationship since the opening to China under Richard Nixon

and going through forward.

But, Clark, maybe why don't you talk a little bit, start off by talking about sort of China's

liberalization starting in the mid and late 1990s and moving through to today because I think the figures are staggering.

Yeah. Look, United States helped welcome China into the World Trade Organization,

sort of the opening up or the liberalization of trade with China. And I think there were a lot of pananglossian thoughts at the time, you know,

that if China moved in a market-oriented direction, you might get some liberalization on

elections and sort of, you know, maybe China moves more in the direction of the United States.

I think time has kind of shown that that maybe wasn't a fully thought out approach.

But I do think American consumers have benefited tremendously from increased integration with China.

Now, you can argue that the United States has lost manufacturing capacity due to import

competition from China. But I do think, you know, ultimately, you're looking at like $1,500 that accrues to an

average American family every single year because of increased trade with China. So it is a

complicated situation. But a lot of the complications, I think, tend to fall more on your side that, you know, on the...

It's usually that way in fairness.

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