That's absolutely absurd.
As for letting China continue to reap the benefits of being defined as a developing nation, yes, that's absurd, and also needed to stop 10-20 years ago.
20 years ago there was close to 700,000,000 people living on less than $2 a day and there was no underground subway in all of China. Do you really think this was developed?
A few cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou & Shenzhen) are developed (~6% of the country) while the rest is still not very developed but improving.
Should it still be developing? Probably but not for much longer. How much is up for debate. Some say now. I expect it will happen sometime in the next 10 years.
Letting China win this with their mafia-like government, where there is no rule of law only rule of the party, is simply not an option.
Right now the biggest challenge is the western politicians who hate Trump so much they don't care if they help the Chinese. Anything to get him down.
But yeah I agree that it's definitely late in the game. We can still win this though.
Absolutely wrong. What do you think the TPP was meant to do?
The only thing Trump does is short term bluster and outbursts with no long term plan at all. Tariffs are short term plays. Long term strategic thinking requires creation of alliances and allies.
The fundamental difference always seems to be if you can persuade the world that your ideas and system is good, or you demand it by force. The latter is not a very effective long term strategy.
Politics isn't debate club. It doesn't work that way especially not when you are dealing with a mafia organization like Chinas ruling party.
I do remember how economists were lining up to shout their party line, that protectionism doesn't work and China was only hurting themselves. For some reason I don't hear so much of that these days, now that China's investments into local companies have started paying off.