You start defending your interests by defending the concept of free trade and a free economy. You demanding that your trading partners do not subsidize - either in the form of pegs or otherwise.
The problem is that the US has ignored (willfully?) the problem of the Chinese PEG for too long already - so to answer your question - we are starting after it is too late.
We need to have a freer China that consumes goods. Their own and our own.
Alternatives are a trade war. A trade war caused by the economic nationalism at hold in China today. And not a trade war caused by free trade!
That demand has been issued. So far, the U.S. is regarded still, as always, by Mao's descendants, as a Paper Tiger.
The problem is that the US has ignored (willfully?) the problem of the Chinese PEG for too long already - so to answer your question - we are starting after it is too late.
All the more reason to be more hardline than anyone in the Administration.
We need to have a freer China that consumes goods. Their own and our own.
Agreed. And is free to have real free enterprise. Real free wages. Real freedom of movement. And real freedom of conscience and faith. From whence flows the founts of liberty.
Alternatives are a trade war. A trade war caused by the economic nationalism at hold in China today. And not a trade war caused by free trade!
That is not an alternative, it is today's reality which is willfully not acknowledged. The U.S. needs a twelve-step program.
The Trade Deficit with China indicates that we are already LOSING a trade war that's facilitated by the Bush Administration's inane quest for zero tariffs. We should immediately enact a uniform, flat-rate tariff of 10~15% on ALL imported goods, regardless of country of origin.
The First Federal Revenue Law
On April 8, James Madison, once again a congressman from Virginia, addressed the House. He went right to the point. Congress, he said, must "remedy the evil" of "the deficiency in our Treasury." He argued that "[a] national revenue must be obtained," but not in a way "oppressive to our constituents." He then proposed that the House adopt legislation, virtually identical to the unimplemented Confederation tariff, imposing a five-percent tariff on all imports....
...A single, uniform tariff, he insisted, had two advantages. First, it could be imposed quickly, which was important because "the prospect of our harvest from the Spring importations is daily vanishing." Second, it was consistent with the principles of free trade ("commercial shackles," he said, "are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic")