The United States and China are in conflict over a number of issues, from China's discriminatory trade policy to its menacing moves toward its neighbors, and hedge fund legend George Soros is concerned.
"Both the US and China have a vital interest in reaching an understanding because the alternative is so unpalatable,"
he writes in The New York Review of Books. "The benefits of an eventual agreement between China and the U.S. could be equally far-reaching."
Soros cites the recent agreement between President Barack Obama and Chinese strongman Xi Jinping on climate-change policy as an example.
"If this approach could be extended to other aspects of energy policy and to the financial and economic spheres, the threat of a military alignment between China and Russia would be removed and the prospect of a global conflict would be greatly diminished," he says.
"That is worth trying. . . . Fully recognizing the difficulties, the U.S. government should nevertheless make a bona fide attempt at forging a strategic partnership with China."
Elsewhere on the U.S.-Asia front, most free-market economists support the idea of fast-track authority for the president to expedite the free-trade agreement with Asia-- the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
But hold on a minute, says Ralph Benko, senior economic adviser for American Principles in Action, and advocacy group for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
"There is another point of view,"
he writes on Forbes.com. "America’s great supply-side founding father, Alexander Hamilton, was, of course, no enemy of tariffs."
While that was 240 years ago, Nobel laureate, supply-side economist Robert Mundell told Forbes.com in 2013, "'it has been a mistake to let U.S. manufacturing run down so low,'" Benko explains.
"'While other nations have industrial policies to maximize their trade benefits, the United States leaves itself open like a naked woman. A big problem is with nations that may prove to be future enemies.' Strong words,'" Benko notes.
The House of Representatives so far has rebuffed President Obama's effort to gain fast-track authority, but there is still a chance that it may pass.
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