If we are ever to get serious about containing China as a geo-economic and strategic challenge, we might begin with our own fifth column—U.S. companies, especially on Wall Street, that profit immensely from the status quo. Indeed, the history of the U.S. letting China into the WTO with no meaningful conditions dates back to a deal brokered by Robert Rubin in 1999, in which the U.S. would cut China slack for its other predatory trade practices as long as Wall Street companies, such as those long associated with Rubin, like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, could get a big piece of the China action.
Since then, American corporations have profited from myriad financial deals, from outsourcing production to China (bribed to build state-of-the-art factories), to taking advantage of near-slave labor conditions to cheapen production costs, to sharing technology with Chinese “partners”. All of this has left the U.S. dangerously reliant on Chinese technology and supply chains.
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