Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Washington state on Tuesday for a visit to the U.S. He met there for two days with industry leaders before jetting off to the other Washington....D.C. While in Washington state Hu did his best to soften the image of China's unfair free-trade policies.
On Tuesday night Microsoft poo bah Bill Gates wined and dined Hu at a lavish dinner at his lakeside mansion. According to the Washington Post, Microsoft just signed a $1.2 billion agreement with Lenovo Group, Ltd. (remember them, this Chinese government-owned company bought IBM's personal computer assets in 2005) to pre-install Windows on computers made in China.
On Hu's second day he visited Boeing in Seattle and made rosy predictions about the future of trade between our two countries but announced no new proposals for cutting his country's huge trade surplus with the U.S....some $202 billion in 2005.
But China did pledge last week to buy 80 Boeing airplanes for $5.2 billion.
These deals show a lot about our countries.... they buy our computer software and airplanes, while we buy their rubber duckies and flip flops.
Will all of this making nice help resolve the problems of the devastating U.S. trade deficit with China, the undervalued Chinese yuan which in part fuels this deficit, and China's growing appetite for oil to fuel their booming economy....now the fourth largest in the world.
While China is on a growth fast-track, the Bush administration is allowing our vital industries to die or be moved abroad with tax-break encouragement; and our workers to be idled or underemployed as jobs are outsourced and wages undercut by illegal aliens pouring across our borders.
Can all of this Chinese lipstick really mask the real trade situation.
China is eating our lunch while we are rushing headlong toward third-world status.
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