"This stupidity is going to do significant harm our economy."
Which shows how far down-hill the United States has slid if it's so dependent upon foreign investment to maintain it's economy. The kind of thing that no doubt has the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln spinning in their graves with disgust and rage at 3000rpm.
So you're suggesting that we're better off if the UAE takes it's billions of dollars and invests it in China instead? WOuld you rather have them spending their money helping Chinese companies build up their infrastructure and fund the development of technology in China?
We live in a world economy. We need to constantly work to improve how we do things. We need to constantly be investing in new technology. We need to always be looking for new markets for our products. We need to always be looking for ways to imporve efficiency.
If we don't someone out there will pass us by. They'll be able to make things faster and cheaper. They'll have better technology. They'll be able to do things that we can't.
In our country the Unions are constantly fighting against this. They oppose new technology because it allows us to manufacture things will less people per item we make. However, by fighting that they make it so we can't be competitive in manufacturing, so instead of our manufacturing growing or holding steady, we keep losing business to other companies that are more efficient and through advancements can make better products. The end result is the union members lose their jobs. If we could keep working on being more competitive we could be taking market share from others and expanding our markets and hiring more american workers. Instead we hav to outsource or move our manufacturing elsewhere to try and stay in business.
Even with that American automotive companies are being driven into bankruptcy by the concessions they accepted because of the unions, while foreign owned automakers are building cars on US soil with non-union laborers and making profits. The non-union workers aren't even getting paid less in general, they and the factories they work in are just more efficient.
Isolationism simply leads to irrevalence. If we do stupid things to discourage foreign investment without good reason, and we discourage foreign countries and companies from buying from us, we are going to be passed up technologicly and economicly by other countries.
Much of our military lead is a technological one. I don't mean to discount the incredible value of a well trained volunteer military, but our relatively small volunteer army wouldn't be able to do what it does without the technological advantages it has.
We wouldn't be able to control battlefields without our complete dominance in air superiority. We wouldn't be able to accurately bomb strategic targets with few to no losses without our technological advantages.
To feed the American economy, we need trade. We need raw materials. We need to continue to show the world that the US is the best place for them to invest their moeny because it will continue to provide a good return on investments.
That keeps our economy stron, and gives our government the tax base they can use to invest in our military.
There's no way America could have grown to be a superpower without trade and foreign investment, and if we do to much to discourage trade and foreign investment, our power will fade.