Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“The whole world knows what Trump’s sycophants won’t tell him: His confrontation with China has ended up demonstrating Chinese strength and American weakness. Now, I am not a mercantilist. Trump may imagine that the world economy is a zero-sum game, where one nation’s gain is another nation’s loss. But it isn’t. China’s astonishing rise since the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping hasn’t made America poorer. If anything, the rapid ascent of a nation of 1.4 billion people from desperate poverty to middle-income status (per capita, China still lags America and Europe) has made us richer, expanding world markets and providing us with manufactured goods that would be far more expensive to produce at home. But China’s rise has created geopolitical problems.” (11/03/25)