On Aug 14, 2007, at 6:44 PM, bhandari at berkeley.edu wrote:
> And why is
> Congress (across party lines) pressuring Paulson to put pressure on
> Chinese authorities? I can't see how the job gain from yuan
> appreciation
> would not be overwhelmed by the losses to the US economy.
You think politics is rational?
In any case, surely you've noticed that there's a lot of steam being produced about how the Chinese are stealing our jobs and poisoning us with their toxic products. Manufacturing unions have sway with some Dems, and Lou Dobbs and the populist right have sway with Reps. There's a lot of anti-trade sentiment around, not all of it based on rigorous empirical analysis. It's especially virulent when it's joined with ancient American tropes about the Yellow Peril. Chinese immigrants were widely hated even though they built half the transcontinental railroad. Wasn't the first American zoning law directed against Chinese laundries in SF?
Doug