Hillary Clinton met with the Editorial Board of the Indianapolis Star yesterday.  She talked about the U.S. economic relationship with China at length, emphasizing that it is our national responsibility to hold China accountable. 

The Senator pointed out that “our companies are not competing with individual companies, but with the whole national agenda [of China].”  In Senator Clinton’s view, China’s agenda is to grow its economy as fast as possible without creating political unrest and, eventually, to dominate the world economically and politically.  Clinton added that there’s no question that China manipulates its currency; sends low-quality and unsafe imports to our market; and has a history of counterfeiting, theft of intellectual property, and industrial espionage. 

Hillary Clinton brought up the case of Magnequench, a company in Valparaiso, IN, that was shuttered in 2003 with all equipment and know-how moved to China.  The story was used in one of Clinton ads running in Indiana.  Magnequench used to make magnets for military applications.  Its production capacity along with sensitive military technology is now lost.  Clinton asserted that we allowed cases like Magnequench and others to occur because we haven’t been effectively protecting our own strategic and economic interests vis-à-vis China.

“I’m 100% in favor of free trade, but I’m not in favor of being taken advantage of,” concluded the candidate.  And she promised that “We are not going to stand idly by and lose our standard of living.”   We’ll keep following Senator Clinton’s position on this issue.  Stay tuned for Senator Obama’s view on China issues.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., Holding China Accountable, Currency Manipulation, Enforcing Trade Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.