Will Trump give in to China, like other presidents have done?

In 2000, Bill Clinton signed a bill passed by House Republicans to extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, wrote Jim Tankersley in the Washington Post. This, combined with China's entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, destroyed manufacturing in the US, writes Anantha Nageswaran. Imports from China rocketed to over $400 billion and over 2 million people lost their jobs. However, China did not allow free trade. How? "China's foreign exchange intervention in the years before the crisis of 2008 was rampant. It amounted to 15% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007. The market for foreign exchange was not allowed to work for a long time," writes Nageswaran. "On trade, China benefited immensely from its WTO accession. However, while an export surplus for China in light manufacturing goods was expected, America had expected to achieve some surplus in capital goods. But even that was not to be." In other words China boosted exports by artificially weakening its currency while putting up entry barriers to US goods. The US had a safeguard in Section 421 but this was not invoked either by George W Bush or by Barack Obama. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2001 the Federal Reserve reduced interest rate from 6% to 1.75%. It was brought down to 1% by 2003. Cheap borrowing encouraged people to take on more mortgage to invest in real estate, which led to the subprime crisis in 2008. It is interesting that with asset prices rocketing up inflation stayed fairly tame, rising to a high of 3.4% in 2005. This was because of cheap imports from China keeping prices depressed. It was not just the subprime borrowers that were hit when house prices fell, but prime borrowers suffered as well when they were unable to sell the houses they had bought, explained Megan McArdle, writing for Bloomberg. In response to the subprime crisis the Fed lowered interest rate to 0.25%. Low interest rates help the wealthy who can borrow cheaply to buy assets. As asset prices have gone up wages have stayed depressed because of unemployment created by the crisis, which has increased inequality in the US. The International Monetary Fund is worried that global debt has reached $152 trillion, which is 225% of the total GDP of the world. Warren Buffett thinks that hedge funds charge too much for poor results, which provides for the huge salaries on Wall Street. Paul Krugman calls them 'vampires' because of their greed. This was the anger which propelled Donald Trump to victory last November. He has banned lobbying for 5 years and a lifetime ban on government officials from lobbying fir foreign governments. That is why the scoundrels are leaking secrets.