U.S. Relations With China

Half the U.S. end of U.S.-China trade is losing out big time to the Chinese government’s trade offensive. While U.S. import industries are going wild from China at the rate of around $60 billion per year, export industries are dramatically stunted. The ratio of exports to imports is 1 to 6.

The Clinton administration is at the heart of this gross imbalance. It has acquiesced over and over to the Chinese government’s policies to shut out American sales. Clinton’s own trade representative spends 17 pages cataloging unfair Chinese trade practices in the 1998 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers. They don’t even give us MFN.

The trade deficit of $50 billion per year puts that much cash in the hands of the Chinese government to conduct whatever mischief it feels like conducting around the world. Some of it has gone into buying political influence in the United States. It seems to be paying off. All the while, millions of workers and hundreds of firms in export industries pay the price.

CARL OLSON

Woodland Hills

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Robert Scheer’s claim that President Nixon “regretted” confronting the Chinese publicly over Tiananmen Square is outrageous (Commentary, June 26). He believed that in the normal course of relations between great powers criticisms should be made privately. But his hard-hitting statements to the Chinese leaders during his visit in the fall of 1989--including banquet toasts that were released to the press and his demand to ex-Premier Li Peng that gun-wielding troops be withdrawn from the gates of the U.S. Embassy--helped the Chinese understand the true depths of American outrage.

He never second-guessed his actions or statements.

JOHN H. TAYLOR

Richard Nixon Library

Yorba Linda