Why and How the U.S. Should Stop Financing China’s Bad Actors

Hillsdale Imprimis ^ | 10/19 | Roger W. Robinson, Jr.

[Track9]

In the early 1980s, I served on President Reagan’s National Security Council. Prior to my time at the White House, I was a vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank, in charge of its USSR and Eastern Europe division. It was my job to assess the creditworthiness of the countries in that part of the world, and I had come to realize that the Soviet Union had relatively modest hard currency income—and that what little it had came largely from the West.

In 1982, the Soviets had an empire stretching from Havana to Hanoi, but their hard currency revenue totaled only about $32 billion a year—roughly one-third the annual revenue of General Motors at the time. They were spending about $16 billion more annually than they were making, with the funding gap—the USSR’s life support—being financed by Western governments and banks.

President Reagan had long believed that the Soviet Union was economically vulnerable, because he knew it lacked the entrepreneurship, technological dynamism, and freedoms that are the prerequisites of a strong modern economy. And when he learned that we in the West were financing its brutal regime, he committed to slowing, and ultimately terminating, that

[Track9]

Excellent read

[DoughtyOne]

Was good...

This is the sort of thing I have been railing against since 1992.

At that time we have a relatively small trade deficit with China, and it’s other entanglements mentioned in this article were mostly non-existent.

We must wake up now, and I suspect this is on Trump’s radar.

I think it’s why we have a trade war to begin with, and I expect to see these sorts of things expand.

[Track9]

Very few are talking about these other entanglements. I’m encouraged to see this article. I too believe our President knows full well what is up.

[farming pharmer]

Excellent read

Agreed.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

This expands on what I was aware of, but it buttresses my case against things I’ve spoken out on for decades.