What Kamala Harris Needs to Do to Take On China

The United States needs a strategy for dealing with China as an economic and national security threat, and Donald Trump’s blustery “America First” approach ain’t it. Kamala Harris has a better shot because of her belief in strengthening alliances.

In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, the vice president promised to make sure that “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century.” In the same sentence, she hinted at how she intends to make that happen. She promised to “strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership.”

Trump’s go-it-alone approach can’t work because the United States isn’t powerful enough to take on China alone.

There is a better way. I read about it in an important article in the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs by Aaron Friedberg, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Its title is “Stopping the Next China Shock: A Collective Strategy for Countering Beijing’s Mercantilism.”

First, the problem. Friedberg writes that 25 years after a surge in Chinese exports disrupted global trade, Beijing is again flooding the world with a wave of “heavily subsidized manufactured goods and materials.” For Beijing, this serves two purposes. It keeps Chinese workers employed at a time that domestic demand is weak. And it transforms China into “the world’s most productive, innovative and powerful state.”

Western economists and diplomats have argued for years that China could score a win-win by consuming more of what it makes instead of selling so much of it abroad. Boosting domestic consumption — and thus shrinking the trade surplus — would raise the living standards of the Chinese people while relieving pressure on foreign factory workers.