What to do about China? It is the world’s second-largest economy and our second-largest trading partner, after neighboring Canada. Yet it remains the wild, wild East of the global economy, a place arguably more dangerous than anywhere else in the world for innovative U.S. companies to do business.
If likely president-to-be Xi Jinping is interested in improving bilateral relations, as he suggested during a recent visit to America, then addressing that problem would be an excellent place to start.
As things stand today, a troubling gap in the rule of law between China and the West costs America as much as $100 billion annually in sales and exports, at the expense of more than 2 million jobs. Those estimates come from the International Trade Commission, which investigated how American products that are supposed to be protected by copyrights, patents and trademarks — everything from software to pharmaceuticals to brand-name clothing — are instead being misappropriated (more…)