Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Kissinger Comes Up Short on North Korea

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alliances, China, East Asia-Pacific, foreign policy establishment, Henry Kissinger, Japan, missiles, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, South Korea, The Wall Street Journal

Henry Kissinger’s plan – or at least outline of a plan – to resolve the North Korea crisis is out. And even though the 94 (94!)-year old former Secretary of State and presidential national security adviser has not held public office in decades, you should pay attention because you can bet American leaders in the Executive Branch and Congress are. So are foreign governments (many of which, including China, Kissinger has made millions – at least – “consulting”for).

Kissinger’s approach, laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Friday, is definitely a cut above the usual (often dangerously misleading) drivel that most commentators have been issuing since North Korea recently demonstrated dramatic and unexpected progress toward being able to hit the U.S. homeland with a nuclear-armed missile. But since Kissinger is a creature of the foreign policy establishment that keeps clinging to an obsolete Korea strategy that is now needlessly exposing the United States to nuclear attack, his proposals ultimately fail to promote and defend America’s interests first, or even to acknowledge the deep splits that must no longer be papered over between U.S. needs and South Korean needs.

The strongest argument Kissinger makes, as I see it, is the suggestion that there’s only one way of persuading China to exert enough pressure on North Korea to achieve Pyongyang’s de-nuclearization, or to start its regime down that road. It’s emphasizing to Beijing that an increasingly powerful nuclear North Korea will inevitably lead other countries to follow suit, and place China in the middle of a ring of nuclear-armed neighbors – many of which are hardly friendly. In other words, Kissinger is identifying an especially compelling reason for China to conclude (finally) that its Korea bottom line must include defanging the North – and quickly, not one of these days.

A public statement of this reasoning also matters because it signals Kissinger’s agreement that preventing nuclear proliferation in Asia may need to take a back seat in U.S. Korea policy to the status quo/establishment position that the United States must bear the main costs and risks (including nuclear risks) of handling North Korea. Not that I doubt the dangers of a regional nuclear arms race. But if that’s the price to be paid for minimizing and possibly eliminating a nuclear to the United States itself, it’s a price that’s a clear bargain. So it’s gratifying to read that Kissinger looks to be in agreement. 

But Kissinger never explains why North Korea would relent absent the kinds of truly comprehensive and strictly enforced economic sanctions whose importance he appears to belittle or dismiss altogether. Instead, he appears to believe that a joint Sino-American statement conveying strong bilateral agreement on the peninsula’s future “would bring home to Pyongyang its isolation and provide a basis for the international guarantee essential to safeguard its outcome.” Unfortunately, nothing publicly known about the North Korean regime indicates that it’s prepared to substitute paper guarantees of its survival for the protection provided by a nuclear arsenal.

Similarly, Kissinger signals support for a solution that would leave Korea divided as at present, but that would trade off de-nuclearization in the North for a permanent ban on reintroducing American nuclear weapons to South Korea (which were removed by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991) and an international agreement prohibiting Seoul from developing its own nuclear arms. But in addition to the “paper promises” problem, Kissinger’s proposal appears to forget that nuclear weapons from anywhere have been included in strategies to defend South Korea in the first place stem from the need to offset the belligerent North’s conventional superiority – which it presumably would still enjoy. So a dangerous military imbalance would be left on the peninsula.

But my biggest complaint about Kissinger’s ideas is the apparent refusal to consider my own favored option – a U.S. military pullout from South Korea (and possibly Japan) that would deny the North any plausible reason to attack the American homeland, and that would force the powerful and wealthy countries of Northeast Asia, which have the greatest stakes by far in a viable North Korea strategy, to take on this responsibility themselves.

The risk? An entire East Asia-Pacific region that’s profoundly destabilized, and even plunged into conflict. The benefit? A dramatic reduction in the odds that a North Korean nuclear weapon would decimate an American city. Or two. Or three. This is even a close call?

Moreover, a U.S. pullout seems to be taboo to Kissinger because he, along with most of the rest of the foreign policy establishment, perversely appears to view protecting allies as being just as important as protecting the United States. What else could be mean when he warns that certain American policies “may be perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory, while leaving the rest of Asia exposed to nuclear blackmail….”?

Not to put to fine a point on it, but when the stakes involve preventing nuclear warheads from killing possibly tens of millions of Americans, why on earth shouldn’t the United States be “perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory”? In fact, any American leader with different priorities should be immediately removed from office and banned for life.

So I continue to admire the force of Henry Kissinger’s intellect, his mastery of a wide range of international issues (except economics), and his command of history. Yet I also continue to view him as a paragon of a peculiarly American species: a so-called diplomatic realist who is anything but.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Laughable EU-Japan Trade Deal

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agriculture, automotive, driverless cars, EU, European Union, fake news, Financial Times, free trade agreements, G20, globalization, Japan, Mainstream Media, Trade, Trump, Wolfgang Munchau, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It seems like the economic policy world is all abuzz about the news that the European Union (EU) and Japan have agreed to the broad outlines of a trade agreement. That’s odd, to put it mildly, since reviewing what’s known about the deal for about five minutes is enough to debunk the notion that it’s a global economic game-changer – and the related claims that it will represents a stinging rebuke to President Trump’s moves toward a more results-oriented U.S. trade policy.

It’s true that the EU and Japan are enormous economic entities. They’re also high-income entities. But they haven’t been very dynamic economic entities. From 2005 to 2016, the former increased its output by just under 28 percent (in euro terms) before factoring in inflation. The latter has grown by less than 2.50 percent in yen terms. By contrast, the United States (which hasn’t been killing it, either) has boosted its current dollar gross domestic product by 41.82 percent during this period in U.S. dollars. 

They’re also regions that tend to run trade surpluses – although massive energy imports following the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster have generally tipped Japan’s total trade into deficit. So from a macro-economic standpoint there’s a major question regarding how willing they are to open their markets significantly on a net basis – especially given how slow their overall growth has been. Maybe that’s why one joint European-Japanese effort to estimate their welfare effects came out with results that barely move the needle. And interestingly, this study projects that the United States will be a net winner.

But the strangest aspect of the prospective deal, especially from the EU perspective, concerns the specific trade flows that are apparently targeted. For Brussels is aiming mainly to boost its exports of food products like meat, wine, and dairy, and in return has been willing to lower its automotive tariffs. The agreement has even been nicknamed the “cars for cheese” deal.

In other words, the Europeans supposedly believe they’ll prosper – and show the Trump administration a thing or two – by giving pride of place to industries that, however politically powerful, have relatively little ability to generate big positive spillovers to the rest of the economy, and welcoming more predatory competition to an industry with phenomenal potential to foster future innovation and productivity growth. (Think “driverless cars.”) In fact, this quid pro quo is so bad for Europe that it casts considerable doubt as to whether its terms will be honored.

Also interesting – for all the European ire about the steel tariffs being mulled by the United States (which runs a big trade deficit in this sector), Brussels has said little about the industry during its trade talks with Japan (which runs a big surplus).

Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau has admirably dissented from the Mainstream Media groupthink and dismissed the EU-Japan deal as “a shameful attempt at manipulation” of the narrative surrounding the recent G20 summit that was hyped by journalists exhibiting “confirmation bias” of their pro-internationalist, anti-Trump views. On this side of the pond, we’ve come up with a simpler description: fake news.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Dangerous Establishment Delusions on North Korea

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Black Hawk Down, Department of Defense, ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, James Syring, Japan, Mark Bowden, missile defense, Missile Defense Agency, North Korea, nuclear missiles, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, The Atlantic

I’m really getting worried about the North Korea crisis – and not just because of the latest headline news since I last wrote on the subject. As most of you have heard or read by now, North Korea has just successfully tested a ballistic missile capable of hitting Alaska. This means that Pyongyang is perilously close to being able to hit American territory with a nuclear weapon. Given how rapid the North’s progress on this frightening front has been, it won’t be too much longer before this erratic (and I’m being charitable here) dictatorship figures out how to lengthen the range of these missiles, arm them with nuclear warheads, and put every inch of the United States in harm’s way.

Of course that’s terrifying enough. But comparably frightening is the continuingly blasé attitude that has underlain the response of the American foreign policy establishment – including a mainstream media that faithfully parrots its views. Just consider the two following items.

First, at the end of May, Admiral James Syring, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said that the Pentagon’s latest test of an anti-missile system showed the military’s ability to “outpace the threat” emanating from North Korea. Not that he’s the last word on the matter, since his views could be colored by political considerations. But this statement wasn’t per se transparently unreasonable.

Yet just a week later, Syring was singing a different tune. Testifying before Congress (that is, under oath), he stated “I would not say we are comfortably ahead of the threat; I would say we are addressing the threat that we know today.” Moreover, Syring attributed his judgment to “The advancements in the last six months have caused great concern to me and others, in the advancement of and demonstration of technology of ballistic missiles from North Korea.” If that’s not an admission that his previous statement (which had been made within that six-month time frame) was baloney, I don’t know what is.

But it gets better. Last Monday came the North Korean test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Last Tuesday, the U.S. government confirmed the missile’s range. But a Defense Department spokesman that same day declared, “We do have confidence in our ability to defend against the limited threat, the nascent threat that is there.”

Now it’s important to remember that, as I’ve written previously, the Pentagon’s definition of success is nothing less than hair-raising. It boils down to “We’ll get most of the missiles.” As in “some of the missiles get through.” As in “big American city (or two or three?) gets obliterated.” Indeed, the DoD spokesman repeated that very definition when he discussed the missile defense program’s track record so far: “It’s something we have mixed results on. But we also have an ability to shoot more than one interceptor.”

But let’s leave aside the Pentagon’s disturbing habit of practically defining out of existence the horrific costs of even a single failure. We still have a senior official telling us before the latest North Korean test that the nation is behind the curve, defense-wise, and then right after that test, one of his colleagues sending the message that all’s well. Pardon me for not feeling incredibly confident.

The second major sign of scary North Korea-related thinking comes from a post in The Atlantic by the magazine’s national correspondent, Mark Bowden. It needs to be specified here that Bowden is the author of Black Hawk Down, the widely and rightly acclaimed account of the debacle that brought to an end the Clinton administration’s looney military intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s. So he’s not your typical bloviating mainstream media pundit.

And that’s why I was so startled to read these passages in his July 5 essay on the implications of the latest North Korean missile test. According to Bowden, Pyongyang’s capabilities don’t “fundamentally alter the military standoff that has been in place for decades.” Why not? Because North Korean dictator Kim Jong and his father before him

“have long had the capability of inflicting mass casualties on South Korea and the nearly 30,000 American forces stationed there. In recent years, the range of Pyongyang’s missiles has included Guam and targets in Japan….So unless the lives of Americans on American soil are inherently more significant than the lives of those serving in that part of the world, or than Korean and Japanese lives, the game is the same. When death tolls are unthinkably high, it’s like multiplying infinity.”

No one of good will could dispute that, in an ideal world, all human lives – especially those of innocent civilians – are equally valuable, and indeed precious. But that’s not the kind of world we live in, and it’s a kind of world that’s been utterly unknown to our species since it wound up organizing itself into units that defined themselves at least to some extent by their distinctiveness from other units.

Today they’re called nation-states, but whether they have been family-based clans or kingdoms or empires or democratic republics or ideological dictatorships, they have invariably at some point determined that their differences could not be settled both peacefully and acceptably, and they’ve resorted to conflict. And whether their actions have been aggressive or defensive or somewhere in between, their actions have inevitably proceeded from the assumption that their subjects’ or citizens’ or comrades’ lives were, collectively, “more significant” than the collective lives of their opponents. What other assumption could they proceed from?

The same question – and answer – continually appears in peacetime, too. That’s why neither American forces nor the forces of any other countries seeking to advance humanitarian aims aren’t constantly being deployed to right wrongs across the globe – even when entire populations are being persecuted or worse. The leaderships of prospective “globocops” believe that their soldiers’ lives are “more significant” to them than the lives of those they would try to save.

And however despicably selfish these views might sound, does anyone out there, in the United States or elsewhere, really want their government to jettison this assumption and plunge into various overseas maelstroms or firestorms or powder kegs?

There is ample room for legitimate debate over how best to deal with North Korea (and Bowden’s Atlantic cover story this month does an excellent job of describing the strengths and weaknesses of the main options under discussion in Washington). There is also ample reason to suppose that some solutions could serve the interests of all the countries involved equally, or nearly equally, well.

But assuming that such win-win outcomes will be found is the height of irresponsibility. And there is absolutely no room for legitimate debate over whether the U.S. government should prioritize the interests (and lives) of its own soldiers and civilians first – at least not until Americans have the opportunity to consider the issue and unmistakably tell their leaders that their security is indeed no more important than that of, e.g., South Korea or Japan.

That, in a nutshell, is why the imminent development of North Korean missiles capable of launching nuclear attacks on American soil “fundamentally alters the military standoff” on the Korean peninsula. It’s also why I’ve concluded that the only acceptable option for the United States is to prioritize its own interests in the safest way possible, withdraw militarily from South Korea, deny the North any reason for attacking American territory, and let North Korea’s powerful neighbors decide what they can and can’t live with.

Although their lives can’t reasonably be seen by U.S. leaders as the equals of American lives, because geography makes their stakes in any outcome orders of magnitude greater, their judgments should be recognized as far superior.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trump Steel Trade Critics Offer Recipes for (Continued) Failure

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Barack Obama, China, European Union, globalization, Japan, national security, Russia, steel, tariffs, The Washington Post, Trade, trade law, Trump, World Steel Organization, World Trade Organization, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The case for bold new Trump administration steps to ensure the U.S. steel industry’s continued viability is so clear that even opponents can’t help but (unwittingly) make it.

Thus this morning, The Washington Post editorial board praised – or at least seems to have praised – the Obama administration’s imposition of the tariffs on imports of Chinese steel because the world’s overwhelming source of overcapacity is China. The Post also urged the White House to remember that in order to avoid “international destabilization,” it’s critical to keep relying on “global institutions such as the World Trade Organization.”

Yet as the paper implicitly recognizes, none of these approaches has succeeded. What else can reasonably be concluded from its acknowledgment that the although the world’s “major governments, including President Barack Obama’s administration, have long recognized” the problem of Chinese fueled steel overcapacity,” the glut continues to create “unsustainable downward pressure on producers’ prices….” That’s “unsustainable” as in “can’t be sustained.” As in “if the downward pressure isn’t stopped, steel producers will start going under.”

The Post, however, has left out some crucial information. Specifically, the pressure on global steel producers has been far from uniformly felt. According to the latest (2015) figures from the World Steel Organization, which represents most of the global industry, the United States runs the world’s largest steel trade deficit by far measured in volume (which leaves out the distortions created by falling prices). At 26.5 million tons, it was nearly 80 percent greater than that of the world’s next biggest net steel importer (Vietnam, at 14.9 million tons), and nearly seven times greater than that of the European Union (3.9 million tons).

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and others are running surpluses, with China lapping the pack at 98.4 million tons and Japan, universally described as a staunch U.S. ally, coming in second at still-impressive 34.9 million tons.

These skewed trade patterns, moreover, are unmistakably affecting national steel output. For example, according to the World Steel Organization, in 2010, as the world’s recovery from the Great Recession was becoming established, the United States accounted for 7.46 percent of global steel output by volume. In 2016, its share had shrunk to 4.95 percent.

China clearly has been the big winner, with its share of world steel production rising from 42.62 percent to 50.16 percent during this period. Japan has boosted market share as well – albeit only from 6.49 percent to 6.60 percent. The European Union and Russia have lost ground – but the losses have been minimal. The former’s global market share has dipped from 11.54 percent to 10.43 percent. The latter’s is down from 4.48 percent to 4.45 percent.

Even weirder: America’s economic growth during this period has outstripped the recoveries of all these countries except China, and its manufacturing sector has recovered (though not completely) thanks largely to a rebound in the steel-intensive automotive industry.

In other words, according to the Post editorial board, due to global overcapacity, the U.S. steel industry is facing unsustainable (and largely artificial) pricing pressure, the worldwide statistics make clear that this pressure is in a class by itself…and the Trump administration is being advised to stick with responses that have been manifestly incapable of preventing this dangerous situation.

It’s perfectly respectable to oppose as a solution the kind of national security-focused tariffs that the Trump administration is considering – even though the advantages they offer (they need no Congressional approval and they can be implemented relatively quickly as well as flexibly) are substantial. But if critics – domestic and foreign – are genuinely interested in solving the longstanding world steel problem in a timely manner, they’ll start proposing alternatives that haven’t already failed.

Following Up: Why the U.S. Still Faces a (South) Korea Problem

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Asia, China, comfort women, Following Up, free-riding, Japan, Kim Jong Un, missile defense, Moon Jae-in, North Korea, nuclear weapons, South Korea, THAAD, Trump

Three days into his presidency, new South Korean leader Moon Jae-In seems determined to prove me wrong in warning that his election could further undermine an American grand strategy toward Asia, and North Korea in particular, that’s already in big trouble.

As I’ve written repeatedly on RealityChek, well before South Korea’s snap presidential election this past Tuesday, the nuclear umbrella extended by Washington for decades over the South and Japan had started creating an unacceptable risk of nuclear attack on the American homeland. The reason: Chinese and North Korean nuclear forces were rapidly becoming able to survive even an attack by America’s own strategic warheads and retaliate by striking the United States.

Moon’s victory seemed bound to make the American position in the region even less tenable by placing in power in Seoul an opponent of the U.S. decision to de-nuclearize the North through a combination of military threats and economic pressure.

So even recognizing that politicians don’t always govern like they campaign, I’ve been surprised to read about several instances in recent days of Moon staying on the reservation. To be sure, President Trump lent a helping hand, making the first call by a foreign head of state to congratulate Moon on his win and inviting him to the United States for an official visit. For his part, Moon declared that “The U.S.-South Korea alliance is the foundation of our foreign policy, and will continue to be so.”

But independent of this conversation came some Moon moves apparently aimed at calming fears of a major rift with the United States. Even before speaking with Mr. Trump, Moon declined explicitly to blame him for the recent escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula, preferring to describe his predecessor in Seoul’s Blue House as the main culprit. The new president also passed up a chance to demand an apology from the United States for supporting a bloody South Korean crackdown on dissidents in the city of Gwangju in 1980 – a distinct sore point with many Koreans today.

Perhaps most strikingly, right after North Korea unleashed a strident criticism of a new U.S.-supplied missile defense system in the South that’s viewed by Moon and many of his compatriots with major reservations, a Moon spokesperson stated that the new president had told China that resolving this controversy depended on the North refraining from further “provocation.”

All the same, Washington should still remain worried about Moon and South Korea going rogue. According to Stanford University Korea specialist Daniel Sneider, Moon hasn’t closed the door completely on reopening the issue of the missile system (known as THAAD) – which is partly aimed at protecting American military forces helping to defend South Korea from North Korean attack. More seriously, Sneider writes, Moon is contemplating building alongside THAAD “an indigenous Korean Air and Missile Defense system, which would not be linked to the U.S. and Japanese missile defense architecture….”

That possibility surely would be unacceptable to the United States, as it would at the least complicate the cooperation between the U.S. and South Korean militaries that would be vital in order to defeat the North in a conflict. Even more stunning, says Sneider, Moon favors creating “a preemptive-strike system armed with South Korean ballistic missiles” – a total nonstarter with Americans, as it would make the security of U.S. forces, and by extension that of the American homeland, dangerously dependent on the decisions of a foreign government.

Nevertheless, a greater role for South Korea in dealings with the volatile and unpredictable North is a centerpiece of Moon’s platform. His objective of enabling his country to “take the initiative” on this front is entirely understandable, given its location right next door to the dictator Kim Jong Un’s fearsome arsenal of nuclear and conventional arms. Moon has also tried to reassure Washington that he would never “approach or unilaterally open talks with North Korea without fully consulting the U.S. beforehand.” Yet it’s all too easy to foresee serious disputes opening up between the two governments over when diplomacy has or hasn’t reached an impasse.

Moon’s aim of raising South Korea’s diplomatic profile also could clash with the Trump administration’s plan to rely heavily on economic muscle flexing by China, by far the North’s leading trade partner, to weaken Pyongyang’s capacity to defy its neighbors demands. On the one hand, he fears that this approach could produce an outcome to the nuclear crisis that neglects South Korean interests. On the other, however, it’s inconsistent with his more fundamental views on the economic dimensions of North Korea diplomacy.

For the United States has long hoped that potent enough sanctions would help force Pyongyang into negotiating an end to its nuclear program, and the Trump administration has ratcheted up military threats as well. In fact, sanctions on North Korea have repeatedly been approved by the entire international community. Moon has said he recognizes the need for continued sanctions of some kind, but was a top aide to one of the South Korean presidents of the 1990s who pursued a so-called “Sunshine Policy” of economic engagement with the North. Not surprisingly, he’s spoken much more often about promoting North Korean reform by expanding his country’s trade with and investment in his Stalinist neighbor than about the role of economic clamps.

Finally, the United States has struggled to shore up the anti-North Korea front by persuading South Korea and Japan to overcome deep and historic animosities and cooperate more extensively in security affairs. But in this respect, Moon has been quite the hard-liner. Specifically, he has opposed even the limited intelligence sharing with Tokyo begun by his predecessor out of unhappiness with the 2015 bilateral agreement to resolve a dispute triggered by Japan’s colonial and wartime practices of forcing Korean women to serve Japanese soldiers and officials as prostitutes (who were euphemistically called “comfort women).

The point here is not to criticize (or praise) Moon’s positions or priorities. As I emphasized in this post’s forerunner, there are any number of reasons for taking South Koreans’ views in general on North Korea with the utmost seriousness. After all, they live right next door. If mistakes are made in handling the North, they’ll suffer the worst consequences by far.

But if Moon, their new leader, is wrong, Americans would suffer fearsome consequences, too – including a retaliatory nuclear strike that could destroy one or more American cities. Even worse, this catastrophe could well stem from South Korea’s failure to spend adequately on its own defense, and consequent heavy reliance on the U.S. commitment – even though it lives in one of the most dangerous regions on earth, and even though it’s exponentially wealthier than the North. And of course, because the United State doesn’t live right next door, or even close, the upside to its own security of its current Korea and broader Asia strategy pales by comparison.

Which is why even had South Koreans chosen a more traditional leader, I would still so strongly favor letting them – and leaders and citizens of even wealthier Japan and other nearby countries – realize Moon-like ambitions, take control of their own destinies, and handle North Korea and other possible threats however they see fit.

But since it’s completely unreasonable – at best – to expect Americans to pay for the Asians’ mistakes if they’re wrong, and war breaks out anyway, Washington should withdraw these forces well before the locals take charge. The end of American military involvement would bring the added and immense benefit of removing the threat of a North Korean nuclear strike – because the United States wouldn’t be taking any actions that would fuel North Korean ire and trigger retaliation.

It’s a clear case of power creating responsibility. Especially if Moon wants more of the former for South Korea, he’ll have to accept more of the latter – for its own security. And if he’s not willing to step up, Washington should make the decision for him. 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Slight March Trade Deficit Dip Conceals Numerous Milestones, Major Asia Deterioration

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Asia, Canada, Census Bureau, China, European Union, exports, free trade agreements, high tech goods, imports, Japan, KORUS, manufacturing, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Pacific Rim, recovery, services, South Korea, Trade, trade deficit, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Note:  So many new records and multi-year highs were revealed by the March trade figures released this morning by the Census Bureau that I’m posting this abbreviated, just calculated, write-up — containing all the main highlights — rather than the usual lengthier, more comprehensive version.

America’s goods and services trade deficit slipped by 0.12 percent on month in March, to $43.71 billion, but the decline was more than offset by a noteworthy 0.47 percent upward revision to the originally reported February figure – to $43.76 billion. This modest movement, moreover, masked major deterioration in America’s trade balances with Pacific Rim countries, many of whose surpluses with the United States had been depressed by winter or spring holidays. 

Whereas in February, the American goods deficit with that region plunged sequentially by 30.76 percent, it rebounded in March by 25.39 percent, to $33.55 billion – the biggest such jump since last March 2015’s 52.63 percent. The greatest (15.53 percent) monthly merchandise import increase since then was largely responsible. Although the China goods deficit remained high – mainly because U.S. merchandise exports in March fell for the fifth straight month – the biggest trade swings were recorded with Japan and South Korea. Significantly, March marked the fifth anniversary of the implementation of the bilateral U.S.-Korea free trade agreement (KORUS) 

The March merchandise deficit with Japan soared by nearly 55 percent, to its highest level ($7.42 billion) since April, 2008 ($7.61 billion). And American goods imports from Japan rose by 32.12 percent to $13.04 billion – their highest total since March, 2007 ($13.47 billion). 

U.S. merchandise exports to South Korea hit a new monthly all-time high in March ($4.36 billion), imports rose to their second highest level ever ($6.61 billion), and the large sequential gains left the goods deficit at $2.25 billion. That was 73.50 percent higher than a February figure that itself had fallen by nearly 50 percent.  

Since KORUS’ implementation, in March, 2012, the U.S. merchandise deficit with South Korea has more than quadrupled (from $561.4 million) on a monthly basis.  By that same measure, U.S. goods exports to South Korea are up by 3.99 percent, and goods imports are 38.08 percent higher. 

The huge and chronic U.S. goods deficit with China rose by 7.03 percent sequentially in March, to $24.58 billion, but remained well below record levels. Nonetheless, American merchandise exports to China’s still strongly growing economy fell for the fifth straight month, to $9.63 billion. That was their lowest level since last September ($9.56 billion). 

Asia events also clearly influenced the big on month rebounds in the March trade deficits for manufacturing (up 15.23 percent, to $69.76 billion, after dropping by 19.88 percent) and high tech goods (up 33.87 percent, to $6.07 billion, after plummeting by 46.39 percent).

New records and multi-year highs were set in U.S. trade on other fronts, too. American goods exports to the European Union hit $25.69 billion – a new all-time best. Goods imports from NAFTA partner, Mexico, however, hit a new record as well ($21.02 billion), and helped boost the bilateral merchandise to its highest level ($7.03 billion) since November, 2007 ($7.23 billion) – just before the Great Recession officially began. The United States fared better with its other NAFTA partner, Canada. Its merchandise deficit sank by 35.49 percent, to $1.37 billion, as exports of $24.92 billion represented the best such total since March, 2015 ($25.50 billion), and imports of $26.29 billion represented their highest level since June, 2015 ($27.34 billion).

U.S. global services exports rose in March to a new record high as well ($64.70 billion), and helped push the surplus to its best level ($21.80 billion) since June, 2015 ($22.41 billion). As for overall goods and services exports and imports, they both fell sequentially in March (by 1.02 percent and 0.73 percent, respectively). 

The trade drag on the historically feeble American economic recovery declined as well, from 17.55 percent in the fourth quarter of last year to 17.44 percent of during the first quarter of this year, but still slowed the economy’s cumulative expansion by a staggering $433.76 billion after inflation.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Establishment Thinking About Containing China Remains Far from Serious

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allies, American Enterprise Institute, Asia, burden sharing, China, Daniel Blumenthal, defense budget, East Asia, entitlements, foreign policy establishment, free-riding, Japan, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, RealClearPolitics.com, South Korea, taxes, tech transfer, Trade

Congratulations to the American Enterprise Institute’s Daniel Blumenthal for coming up with some genuinely new insights into the U.S.-China balance of power and especially its relationship with the evolving economies of the two countries. Unfortunately, Blumenthal’s new essay for RealClearPolitics.com also shows that gaping blind spots remain in establishment thinking about the China challenge its members claim to be analyzing seriously.

For the purposes of this post, let’s grant Blumenthal’s mainstream assumption that it matters greatly to the United States which great power dominates East Asia politically. I disagree, but the point here is that if America does want to fend off a China challenge, greater policy changes will be needed than Blumenthal and other conventional wisdom-mongers seem ready to contemplate.

The author’s main theme is that the United States has no legitimate reason to doubt its economic capacity to prevent China from becoming Asia’s kingpin, and his new wrinkle involves measuring economic power by looking more at national wealth, and less at national economic growth. Since the U.S. wealth levels are both much greater than China’s, and since the gap has just resumed growing according to statistics he cites, America can easily afford the military forces needed to put China back in its place. And he blames China’s recent and impressive catch-up on this score on Americans’ recent (Blumenthal doesn’t specify the time frame) political decision to skimp on military spending while continue to devote exorbitant sums to entitlement spending – which has indeed long dominated the budget outlays (along with, as he’s noted, interest payments on the resulting ballooning national debt).

According to Blumenthal, Americans and their leaders as a result have chosen to elevate “the intergenerational transfer of wealth” over national security. Strictly speaking, he’s right. But other interpretations of national priorities seem just as legitimate.

For example, as the author briefly notes, the U.S. population is aging. So a major national retirement funding challenge will face even the most defense-minded politicians. That doesn’t let American leaders or the recipients of these entitlements off the hook in terms of making sacrifices needed to safeguard national security. But it’s bound to raise the question of whether the burden of sacrifice should be limited to middle class Americans. The great increase in national wealth mentioned by Blumenthal makes clear that the nation has many other resources on which it can draw to fund a bigger military – especially since the private economy’s wealth has led the surge. In other words, why not tax the rich or corporations more heavily to pay for new personnel and weapons?

One obvious rejoinder is that modest levels of taxes on wealthy Americans and on American companies are needed to ensure the economic growth needed to keep national wealth levels robust. But even accepting the doctrinaire trickle-down economics underlying this assumption, should upper-level individual incomes and business profits be completely exempted from any responsibility to pay for the military? If so, why? And wouldn’t that policy greatly loosen the relationship between national wealth and military capability emphasized by Blumenthal?

The author also neglects another big pool of resources that can be brought to bear on countering China: the wealth of America’s regional allies. Stunningly, after decades of American pleading for greater burden-sharing, countries with a far greater stake than the United States in resisting Chinese regional domination continue free-riding on U.S. defense guarantees. Why should American entitlements recipients see any reduction in benefits before Japanese and South Koreans pay at least as much for their own security (relatively speaking) as the much more geographically distant United States does? And their contributions could be immense. Japan alone, for example, is the world’s third largest national economy (behind the United States and China, respectively). 

Finally, as with nearly all the rest of the establishment, Blumenthal completely neglects the opposite side of the U.S.-China defense resources equation: The decisive extent to which American economic policy continues enriching China, and therefore continuing to enable it to afford lots of both “guns and butter” (as economists and political scientists have dubbed military and social spending). Thanks in part to literally trillions of dollars of earnings from the trade surpluses it’s long run with the United States, the Chinese pie keeps expanding strongly (that’s the economic growth whose importance Blumenthal softpedals). As a result, more new resources are generated for whatever priorities or combination of priorities the Chinese government chooses.

Even worse, as I’ve long noted, recklessly lax tech transfer policies on America’s part have for decades given the Chinese much of the knowhow needed to turn out increasingly advanced weapons and other military systems. Some signs of official concerns about this outflow have appeared in Washington lately, but U.S. leaders (and the rest of the establishment) remain woefully behind the curve.

When America’s East Asia security strategy stops bolstering the Chinese threat it depicts as such a huge concern, when it insists that local countries act like they have at least as great a stake in remaining independent of China as does the United States, when the wealthiest Americans are required to devote more of their recent immense windfalls to the common defense, and if all of those changes still leave China closing fast on the combined forces of the United States and its neighbors, it would become legitimate to ask Main Street Americans to start shouldering greater burdens. Until then, the U.S. working and middle classes will be entirely justified in demanding that the nation’s Asia strategy pass a minimal seriousness test first.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. North Korea Policy Remains Dangerously Behind the Curve Despite Signs of Progress

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alliances, Charles Krauthammer, China, deterrence, extended deterrence, Finlandization, foreign policy establishment, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pundits, South Korea, Trump, Washington Post

As I explained last week (not that it’s my insight alone!), America’s leading political pundits enjoy much of their fame (and consequent incomes) to their access to power. Close relations with American and other leaders can turn them into craven establishment mouthpieces when they express their own opinions. But they also enable these commentators to serve as reliable carriers of messages being sent quite deliberately by decision-makers, and by the policy specialists who advise them.

That’s why the latest column from the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer was both encouraging and discouraging when it comes to dealing with the growing nuclear weapons threat from North Korea. The good news, if Krauthammer’s piece is any guide, is that the policy community is finally starting to consider some desperately needed outside-the-box ideas for making sure that U.S. policy doesn’t wind up with Pyongyang destroying an American city or two. The bad news is that these same policy specialists and political leaders still don’t have their arms completely around this intensifying crisis.

Krauthammer’s main point seems to be that the United States still has “major cards” to play both against North Korea and against China, whose help President Trump says he’s counting on heavily to either de-nuclearize the North or somehow contain its weapons program to an acceptable degree. Some of them are pretty innovative and constructive, and per my analysis above, if he’s mentioning them, that’s a strong indication that important conventional thinkers and policymakers are mulling them, too.

For example, Krauthammer observes that Washington could ease many of China’s fears about the consequences of regime change in North Korea (which he describes nicely), and spur decisive pressures by Beijing, by “abjuring Korean reunification. This would not be Germany, where the communist state was absorbed into the West. We would accept an independent, but Finlandized, North Korea.

“During the Cold War, Finland was, by agreement, independent but always pro-Russian in foreign policy. Here we would guarantee that a new North Korea would be independent but always oriented toward China. For example, the new regime would forswear ever joining any hostile alliance.”

For my part, I agree that no significant American interests would be compromised or even affected by such a deal.

Maybe even more significantly, Krauthammer seems to be recommending that the United States suggest to China that, if it doesn’t get on the North Korea stick, South Korea and Japan would likely develop nuclear weapons themselves. As he notes, because of the history of brutal conflicts “The latter is the ultimate Chinese nightmare.”

If I’m right, this Krauthammer point signals that American policy toward Asian security (and possibly European security) could be headed for a highly welcome sea change. After all, as I’ve explained, preventing Japan’s nuclearization in particular has been a central goal of U.S. strategy in Asia since the end of World War II. Because a nuclear Japan, or even a conventionally mighty Japan, was thought too likely to return to its warlike ways, American leaders for decades have insisted on handling the job of defending Japan, and incurring many of the greatest risks – including triggering nuclear conflict.

And as you may remember, when candidate Trump suggested during his campaign for the White House that this approach be rethought, he was hammered by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment – including former President Obama – as a dangerous know-nothing.

So the change Krauthammer could be foreshadowing would represent nothing less than a U.S. foreign policy revolution.  It would mean that Washington at long last recognizes that the favorable nuclear balance that for so many years arguably made this policy of “extended deterrence” a reasonable risk is now rapidly changing for the worse. Specifically, as I’ve written, North Korea’s progress toward developing a secure retaliatory force now could be exposing the American homeland to risk that is by definition unacceptable because it’s being borne in order to protect other countries, not the United States itself.

Unfortunately, Krauthammer’s column also may add to the evidence that official and quasi-official thinking on North Korea remains way behind the curve. For example, he seems to recommend that Washington at least implicitly threaten China with the return of American nuclear weapons to South Korea if Beijing doesn’t raise its North Korea game.

Actually, this move would reduce the nuclear threat posed to the United States by war in Korea – by increasing the odds that such a conflict’s nuclear dimension would be confined to the exchange of short-or medium-range weapons whose destructive effects would be limited to the Korean peninsula. North Korea, according to the conventional and, to me, reasonable, wisdom, would continue to be deterred from launching nukes at the United States itself for fear that America would retaliate by using much more powerful intercontinental weapons that could completely annihilate the North (as well as the South).

So what’s the problem? Precisely because it alone would suffer the greatest damage, and precisely because that knowledge would make America likelier to use those short-range weapons in response to an invasion from the North, this strategy has surely become completely unacceptable to South Korea. And you can bet that neighboring Japan isn’t a big fan, either.

The Asian allies would greatly prefer that, if U.S. nuclear weapons are used in a Korean conflict, they be the weapons that shift as many risks as possible to the United States itself – and create the chance that the nuclear dimension of any Korean conflict would be fought literally over their heads. South Korea would also (legitimately) tell the United States that threatening North Korea with instantaneous nuclear destruction if it invades the South is the best way to reduce the chances of that invasion taking place to begin with. In other words, it’s the best way to strengthen deterrence and therefore preserve peace.

I know that for those outside the foreign policy community, these ideas sound completely loony. But they’re exactly the kinds of ideas that had roiled relations between the United States and its allies in Europe for decades, too.

Krauthammer also endorses, at least in principle, the notion of conveying American resolve to the North by shooting down “a North Korean missile in mid-flight to demonstrate both our capacity to defend ourselves and the futility of a North Korean missile force that can be neutralized technologically.”

He’s correct in writing that this option would be safer than a “preemptive attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities and missile sites [which] would almost surely precipitate an invasion of South Korea with untold millions of casualties.” But what if the shoot-down attempt fails? Wouldn’t that further embolden the North? I sure as heck wouldn’t want to take that chance.

So despite the encouraging signs in Krauthammer’s column, I remain convinced that the Korean crisis is a situation where the only choices for the United States are not between good and bad, or even between bad and worse, but (because of the nuclear dimension) between perversely reckless and downright suicidal. Therefore, U.S. leaders need to capitalize on the only truly decisive asset working on their country’s behalf –America’s great distance from the peninsula – and withdraw as soon as possible the military forces still stationed in South Korea. They have no ability to advance or defend important U.S. interests at acceptable risk, but they have greatly and rapidly increasing ability to drag the nation needlessly into a potentially disastrous conflagration.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: How Trump Can Get His Trade Chops Back

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bilateral trade agreements, China, dispute resolution, free trade agreements, Government Accountability Office, Japan, managed trade, Mike Pence, multilateral trade agreements, North Korea, Robert Lighthizer, semiconductors, South Korea, tariffs, Trade, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, U.S.-Japan semiconductor agreement, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Comments made by Vice President Pence on his Asia trip concerning America’s trade relations with Japan and South Korea show both the promise and peril of the Trump administration’s approach to international commerce and globalization. Major gains for the economy are possible from negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with Japan and revamping what Mr. Pence described as a failed deal with South Korea. But first, the president and his aides must show more awareness than to date of why accords with countries like these keep failing.

According to candidate Trump, and President Trump, the main problems with such measures have been, variously, incompetent U.S. negotiators, dominance of the policy process by offshoring and similar interests, and a mistaken preference for multilateral arrangements over bilateral deals where America’s leverage is less likely to be watered down.

The second reason for failure cited above has certainly shaped U.S. trade agreements with super low-cost countries that have been tempting locations for production and job offshoring, and that have revealingly comprised the vast majority of trade deals initiated and signed by Washington since the early 1990s. But footloose multinationals have played a much smaller role when it comes to higher income countries like Japan and South Korea. There, achieving better results for the American domestic economy has faced two leading obstacles.

The first has been widely noted: the longstanding tendency of the U.S. leaders to elevate geopolitical aims like strengthening security alliances over economic aims like removing distortions to trade flows. Here, strangely, the administration has been giving off mixed signals lately. The president is now clearly treating the security-related objective of gaining more Chinese cooperation in resolving the North Korea nuclear weapons crisis as a higher priority than combating the numerous predatory Chinese trade policies that have hurt domestic employers and their workers. But he blasted such priorities as recently as last month. And the Pence statements indicate that trade and security issues will be handled on separate tracks for Japan and South Korea.

The second obstacle has been less widely noted – although it’s been a major theme of mine: Opening markets in highly protectionist countries like those Asian powers is fiendishly difficult, at best. As I’ve written, these economies are most accurately seen as nation-wide systems of protection and mercantilism. The particular form taken by any of their trade barriers or subsidies at any given moment matters much less than the underlying intent to manage trade flows to their advantage. In addition, these protectionist systems are run by powerful bureaucracies whose secretiveness and agility makes even identifying problematic practices – much less combating them – excruciatingly difficult.

The bottom line is that trade agreements with such countries are virtually impossible to monitor and enforce effectively, and because their governments know this, the provisions are violated routinely.

By contrast, because the U.S. government is so transparent, almost of America’s trade barriers and subsidies are easy to identify and attack, and American compliance with trade agreements is easy to measure. So it’s easy to see how these agreements strongly tend to create more (and more strongly guaranteed) access to the U.S. market than vice versa. This new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows how these damaging results can stem from multilateral agreements, but the Korea deal spotlighted by Spence and a long string of agreements with Japan show the similarly dismal record of bilateral arrangements.

That’s not to say that worthwhile trade deals with Japan and South Korea are impossible. But they’ll require thinking that’s much further outside the box than the administration seems to be engaged in. The best possibility would be going the managed trade route. That is, rather than accept unverifiable promises to dismantle trade barriers or end subsidies, America’s interlocutors would commit to allot specific shares of their domestic markets to specific U.S.-origin goods and services. There’s even a precedent for this practice – the 1986 semiconductor trade agreement reached between Washington and Tokyo.

Managed trade of course isn’t free trade. But little about Japanese and South Korean policies fits the definition, either. And the history of the semiconductor deal is well known by President Trump’s choice to head the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, Robert Lighthizer, because he was personally and deeply involved.

Another possibility would be to expand one of the few modestly worthwhile leafs from former President Obama’s 2012 trade agreement with South Korea. Precisely because Seoul’s predatory practices in the automobile sector specifically were so difficult to combat via the standard, legalistic procedures used in the dispute-resolution systems in most American free trade agreements (and the international counterpart run by the World Trade Organization), Mr. Obama secured South Korean acceptance of provisions that are especially appropriate in dealings with opaque bureaucracies that prevent significant evidence gathering.

Specifically, if a dispute-resolution panel convened under the agreement decides that Seoul is violating the auto provisions, and the United States restores pre-agreement tariffs on Korean products, it’s up to the Koreans to prove that they’re back in compliance with the treaty before the new tariffs are removed. Even better, however, would be to impose the burden of proof on South Korea, Japan, and similar countries as soon as a complaint is filed.

Yet there’s a strong argument that the very structure of dispute-resolution mechanisms is fatally flawed. Whether the trade agreement in question is bilateral or multilateral, these arrangements treat the United States as an equal party. But given the huge size of the U.S. economy relative to any other trade agreement signatories, and therefore given its status as the paramount prize in any such agreement, this “one country-one vote” set-up is as absurd as it is detrimental to American interests.

Rather than agree to such standard dispute-resolution systems – which invariably result in deadlocks that penalize open economies like America’s – Washington should insist that dispute-resolution votes be allotted more realistically. Basing them on the sizes of the various signatory economies is one obvious formula.

And don’t forget the ultimate America-First trade policy: Dispense with negotiations altogether, or for the most part, and start imposing tariffs on the imports of predatory trading powers, or on all imports (in order to prevent offshore exporters from switching production sites). Of course, that universalism is a big virtue of the border adjustment tax proposed by the House’s Republican leaders. In return, Mr. Trump could offer greater U.S. market access to those countries that prove (after years of good behavior according to exclusively American judgments) that they’re giving American exports a fair shake. This form of unilateralism should have special political appeal for an administration that’s increasingly in need of some big early economic wins.

President Trump (at least the pre-China currency version) has been termed a trade policy disrupter. If he wants to re-earn that label, getting the nation’s Japan and South Korea trade right after decades of frightful losses would be a great place to start.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Genuinely 21st Century Approach to Asia

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, Cold War, coupling, defense spending, East Asia-Pacific, extended deterrence, free-riding, Japan, Lifezette.com, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South Korea, Trade, trade surpluses, Trump, Xi JInPing

Yesterday in a piece for Lifezette.com, I argued that President Trump should ignore the advice he seems to be getting from his more establishmentarian advisers, and from conventional thinkers outside his administration, and focus on economics and not security when he meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping starting tomorrow.

Today, I’d like to spell out some of the assumptions about America’s priorities in the East Asia-Pacific (EAP) region that lead to these conclusions – and why genuinely bringing America’s grand strategy in the region into the twenty-first century is essential to reduce the nation’s vulnerability to nuclear attack and to strengthening its economy.

First, as I’ve long maintained, since the Cold War has been over for nearly three decades, the geopolitical basis for the current American approach to the EAP has simply disappeared. Until 1990, Washington provided a nuclear umbrella for the region and set up alliances for two main reasons. First, the United States was determined to keep Asia’s vast economic power and potential out of communist hands. Second, America resolved to prevent Japan from needing to conduct an independent foreign policy – which U.S. leaders believed would lead to its rearmament and likely reversion to 1930s- and ’40s-style militarism.

Since 1990, America’s goals have remained essentially the same, but one of the rationales shifted. Preventing Japanese rearmament was still (secretly) treated as an imperative. But with the Soviet threat gone and China increasingly integrated into the world economy, the United States began justifying its continued military presence as essential for buttressing the stability needed to keep the region’s economically dynamic countries functioning as major cogs of an increasingly close-knit global trade and investment system. Also reinforcing regional stability would be the continuing protection of South Korea from its bellicose northern neighbor.

The most dangerous problem with this approach is that, although it arguably made sense from the U.S. standpoint when America’s main actual and potential rivals in the region either had no nuclear weapons (North Korea), or vastly inferior and relatively primitive nuclear forces (China), it has become ever more suicidal more recently. For whereas once Washington could credibly brandish a nuclear threat to keep powerful enemy conventional forces at bay while incurring almost no risk of nuclear retaliation against the American homeland, the Chinese and even North Korean have now made major progress towards fielding nuclear weapons both capable of reaching American shores and of surviving U.S. nuclear attacks. As a result, they can now place American cities in mortal danger.

To modify a common Cold War-era saying, Washington has promised to sacrifice Los Angeles in order to save Seoul and/or Tokyo. Has anyone explained to the American people why this potential tradeoff is remotely acceptable – or even sane? Quite the contrary. A literally suicidal strategy keeps getting dressed up in terms that sound either comfortingly technical and abstract (like “extended deterrence”) or even warm and fuzzy (like “coupling”).

Indeed, the latter phrase, upon examination, reveals what has now become by far the least forgivable aspect of American strategy given current nuclear circumstances: The “coupling” of America’s security to its allies’ security was designed to force the United States to risk nuclear attack to protect Japan and South Korea. This aim was accomplished mainly by stationing major American forces right along the North-South Korea border – the Demilitarized Zone – to ensure that they would die during a North Korean invasion and thereby give an American president no real choice but to respond with nukes. The presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in Japanese bases and on patrol through regional waters serves the same purpose. That is, the United States surrendered one of the paramount goals of genuine national security since the Atomic Age began – the power to choose whether to involve itself in a nuclear war, or to avoid one. And Washington stubbornly clings to this strategy even though the nuclear landscape has been decisively transformed.

Two related developments make Washington’s acceptance of this risk even less acceptable. First, America’s Asian allies have become more than capable of defending themselves from their enemies. Yet even South Korea, with a possibly deranged dictatorship for a neighbor, has understandably decided to rely on American blood and treasure for its security, and skimped on its military spending. And although Japan has increased its own defense budget and capabilities significantly in recent years, its far greater economic power still justifies the label “free rider.”

Second, precisely because current nuclear circumstances make the American defense guarantee so literally non-credible despite the coupling strategy, the likelihood of Japan and South Korea acquiring nuclear weapons for their own defense rises with each new North Korean missile test and each new Chinese thrust into the South or East China Seas. In other words, if that train hasn’t already left the station, its engines are firing up.

There is, however, an immense silver lining that the supremely unconventional President Trump – unlike many of his advisers – should be quick to recognize: Because the Cold War threats are gone, and because the whole of the EAP relies so heavily on net exports – especially to the United States – for its growth, America no longer needs to worry about a foreign power controlling the region politically.

This development is of course most relevant to America’s China strategy. It means that even if Beijing established unquestioned hegemony in its backyard, China and all of its supposed new vassals would still desperately need to access the U.S. market. The flip side of this proposition is just as crucial: America’s paramount interests in the EAP are economic – ensuring adequate access to Asian markets, and safeguarding American domestic businesses and their employees from predatory Asian trade practices. Further, the best way to achieve these goals is by wielding economic, not military, power.

A U.S. China and Asia policy reflecting these trends – and other generally ignored regional realities that increasingly have been staring obtuse establishment analysts in the face – would make for a dramatically different agenda for this week’s China summit than has apparently been laid out. For example, President Trump has indicated that he will press China’s Xi harder to use his leverage on North Korea to curb or even end the latter’s nuclear weapons program, threaten to attack the North militarily if China doesn’t step up, but ease up on trade pressure if Beijing goes with the American Korea program.

Far better would be for Mr. Trump to recognize that this position raises the prospect of accepting continued Chinese trade predation as long as China even holds out the prospect of providing a North Korea assist; that even if North Korea’s nuclear weapons can’t hit American territory yet, a war with its regime could terribly bloody America’s conventional forces in the Pacific along with allied civilian populations; and that whatever nuclear threat to the United States faces from the North stems not from any intrinsic desire to attack America, but from continued U.S. military involvement in a decades-long Korean civil war that has only been suspended since 1953.

Modernized American priorities would enable the president eventually to tell his Chinese counterpart that the United States is greatly lowering its military profile in Korea, and that however China decides to deal with its dangerously predictable neighbor will be fine with Washington. But since both the Chinese and especially American allies would need time to prepare for this transition, and since a premature announcement would only embolden North Korea, Mr. Trump should simply downplay the subject at the summit, convey these messages privately as soon as Xi leaves, and let the transition begin before going public. A similar approach should be taken toward territorial disputes in the East and South China seas.

Having freed himself to focus on trade and other economic issues, the President should tack away from the conventional wisdom in this sphere, too. Specifically, he should acknowledge that the main lesson of long years of U.S. China trade diplomacy is that there’s no longer any point in negotiating trade agreement with Beijing. The Chinese record of breaking their promises is too long, and even an administration determined to monitor and enforce trade deals would face a formidable challenge in keeping track of conditions in China’s gargantuan industrial complex.

Instead, Mr. Trump should keep the discussion general and thank Mr. Xi for coming such a long way. Then once all the photo-op moments are finished, and he’s departed, the administration should develop a list of Chinese goods that represent especially egregious examples of trade predation (either in the Chinese market or the U.S. market, and impose unilateral tariffs on them. The president should specify that the list will keep growing until he receives reliable information that the Chinese have not only dropped trade barriers, but have compiled a serious track record of keeping them low – which will of course take several years to demonstrate. He should make clear that his own administration will be judge, jury, and court of appeals for any Chinese claims of compliance. And he should then let Mr. Xi know that he’s looking forward to their next meeting – and would of course be happy to come to Beijing.