China was granted Most Favored Nation status through presidential proclamation on an annual basis from 1980 – 1998. This was because the Trade Act of 1974 stated that “MFN status may not be conferred on a country with a nonmarket economy if that country maintains restrictive emigration policies” China was, and still is, a nonmarket economy and restricted emigration, but the Act allowed the president to “waive this prohibition on an annual basis if he certifies that granting MFN status would promote freedom of emigration in that country.”

According to CRS Report 98-603 for Congress, “China’s Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) Status: Congressional Consideration, 1989-1998:” After the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, there was enough opposition to granting MFN status to China that the “House passed joint resolutions disapproving MFN for China in both 1991 and 1992,” but the Senate didn’t pass the joint resolution. However, the real focus of the debate was not whether to deny MFN status for China altogether, but whether or not to “place new human rights conditions on China’s MFN eligibility.” Congress passed legislation in 1991 and 1992 that would have placed further conditions on China’s MFN status, but President Bush vetoed the legislation.

In 1993, President Clinton announced he would link China’s MFN status to human rights progress beginning in 1994. However, President Clinton reneged on his campaign promise and reversed himself: “On June 2, 1995, President Clinton transmitted to Congress his intention to waive the emigration prohibition and extend MFN status to the People’s Republic of China for an additional year, beginning July 3, 1995.”

An L.A. Times article of May 27, 1994, reported: “President Clinton, abandoning a central foreign policy principle of his Administration, announced Thursday that he has decided to “de-link” China’s privileged trading status from its human rights record. While acknowledging that China “continues to commit very serious human rights abuses,” Clinton said that he has come to believe that broader American strategic interests justify the policy reversal.”

The annual granting of MFN status to China by a presidential waiver continued through 1998. Note that “On July 22, 1998, legislation was enacted which replaced the term “most-favored-nation” in certain U.S. statutes with the term “normal trade relations.” This made it easier for Congress to make the fateful decision to extend “permanent normal trade relations,” or PNTR, to China when the Senate voted to give China permanent most-favored-nation status on September 19, 2000. This vote paved the way for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization.

As Reihan Salam, President of the Manhattan Institute wrote in an article titled

“Normalizing Trade Relations With China Was a Mistake,” in the June 8, 2018 issue of The Atlantic, “PNTR was a euphemism designed to get around the fact that the traditional term for “normal trade relations” was “most-favored-nation” (MFN) tariff status…MFN status meant imports would be treated as favorably as those arriving from “the most favored nation.” Absurd as it might sound, this linguistic convention had meaningful political consequences. To argue that we ought to have normal trade relations with China was one thing. Sure, why not? To make the case that China ought to be treated as our most favored nation was a more vexing PR challenge, not least in the wake of the brutal crackdown that followed the Tienanmen Square protests in 1989.”

An article in the American Economic Review, “The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment,” by Justin R. Pierce and Peter K. Schott, July 7, 2016, states:

“The permanence of PNTR status made an enormous difference: Without PNTR, there was always a danger that China’s favorable access to the U.S. market would be revoked, which in turn deterred U.S. firms from increasing their reliance on Chinese suppliers. With PNTR in hand, the floodgates of investment were opened, and U.S. multinationals worked hand-in-glove with Beijing to create new China-centric supply chains.” https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20131578

This change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports resulted in industries that were more vulnerable to the change experiencing greater employment loss, increased imports from China, and higher entry into the U.S. market by U.S. importers and foreign-owned Chinese exporters. My three books and the hundreds of articles I’ve written since 2009 have described what has happened to U.S. manufacturing since 2001. Besides the loss of 5.8 million manufacturing jobs and the closure of an estimated 67,000 American manufacturers, American manufacturing shifted toward more high-tech, less labor-intensive production. However, as China upgraded their technology in the past few years, we started losing our high-tech manufacturing also.

In addition to the annual reports to Congress by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission documenting China’s violation of World Trade Organization rules along with human rights violations, the U.S. Department of State submits an annual report on International Religious Freedom in accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. According to the 2018 International Religious Freedom Report :

“Multiple media and NGOs estimated the government detained at least 800,000 and up to possibly more than 2 million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other Muslim groups, mostly Chinese citizens, in specially built or converted detention facilities in Xinjiang and subjected them to forced disappearance, torture, physical abuse, and prolonged detention without trial because of their religion and ethnicity since April 2017.  There were reports of deaths among detainees.  Authorities maintained extensive and invasive security and surveillance, in part to gain information regarding individuals’ religious adherence and practices.” 

Therefore, it gave me great pleasure when I read that on September 17, 2020, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) introduced a bill (S.4609) that “would strip China of its permanent most-favored-nation status—also known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations—a designation it has held for the last twenty years. If passed, the legislation would make extending most-favored-nation status to China an annual decision for Congress and the president.”

Cotton said, “Twenty years ago this week, the Senate gave a gift to the Chinese Communist Party by granting it permanent most-favored-nation status. That disastrous decision made the Party richer, but cost millions of American jobs. It’s time to protect American workers and take back our leverage over Beijing by withdrawing China’s permanent trade status.”

Senator Cotton’s press release states:

“The China Trade Relations Act would revoke China’s permanent most-favored-nation status and return to the pre-2001 status quo, whereby China’s MFN status must be renewed each year by presidential decision. Congress could override the president’s extension of MFN by passing a joint resolution of disapproval.

The bill also would expand the list of human-rights and trade abuses under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that would disqualify China for MFN status, absent a presidential waiver. The abuses that would make China ineligible for MFN status, absent a presidential waiver, are as follows:

• Uses or provides for the use of slave labor;
• Operates ‘vocational training and education centers’ or other concentration camps where people are held against their will;
• Performs or otherwise orders forced abortion or sterilization procedures;
• Harvests the organs of prisoners without their consent;
• Hinders the free exercise of religion;
• Intimidates or harasses nationals of the People’s Republic of China living outside the People’s Republic of China; or
• Engages in systematic economic espionage against the United States, including theft of the intellectual property of United States persons”

China’s strategic goal is to dominate the sectors of economic growth that historically have held the key to world power: transportation energy, information, and manufacturing. Their “Made in China 2025” plan is designed to dominate key technology sectors such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonic missiles, and 5G. They also plan to become the dominant power in space by 2049.

If this bill isn’t passed in the Lame Duck session, I strongly urge that it be reintroduced into the next Congress and passed unanimously next year. It’s time China for us to stop treating China as a friend and recognize China as the enemy to our national sovereignty it is.

In July 2017, the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) released a paper titled, “The Threat of U.S. Dollar Overvaluation: How to Calculate True Exchange Rate Misalignment & How to Fix It” by Michael Stumo (CEO), Jeff Ferry (Research Director) and Dr. John R. Hansen, a 30-year veteran of the World Bank and Advisory Board member.

The purpose of the paper is to explain the problem of the dollar overvaluation, to show how to accurately calculate the dollar’s misalignment against trading partner currencies, and to propose a solution this serious threat to America’s future. At the time, the dollar was overvalued by 25.5% compared to other major currencies.

The solution developed by Dr. Hansen is a Market Access Charge (MAC) “as a system to discourage overseas private investors and return-sensitive official investors such as sovereign wealth fund managers from excessive speculation and trading in U.S. dollar assets.” He believed that the MAC would reduce “the incentive for foreigners to invest in dollars, gradually and safely reduce its overvaluation, benefiting the U.S. economy and restoring control over our own currency.”

In February 2019, CPA released the working paper, “Quantifying Economic Growth and Job Creation from a competitive Dollar,” showing that a 27 percent realignment in the trade weighted US dollar exchange rate over five years would eliminate the US trade deficit, result in an additional $1 trillion in GDP and create 5.2 million new jobs.

The MAC was proposed in a Senate bill introduced in July 2019, S.2357, titled the “Competitive Dollar for Jobs and Prosperity Act.” It was introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), and is languishing in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

On October 5, 2020, CPA released a working paper, “Modeling the Effect of the Market Access Charge on Exchange Rates, Interest Rates and the US Economy,” by Steven L Byers, PhD. and Jeff Ferry.

In Section 1, The Relationship Between International Capital Flows and the Exchange Rate, the authors state that

“The standard open-economy macroeconomic models predict that under a floating exchange rate regime, when a country runs a trade deficit/surplus, the exchange rate will adjust to eliminate the imbalance. However, exchange rates have not adjusted and imbalances have persisted. The US trade and current account deficits have continued to run at some 2%-3% of US GDP for decades (Figure 1), suggesting that other forces are preventing the deficits from correcting themselves.”

The authors go into detailed economic models that establish the relationship between equity inflows and the currency dollar exchange rate.

In Section 2, The MAC, Capital Flows and the Dollar Exchange Rate, the authors examined how a charge on capital inflows is likely to impact inflows and the exchange rate, focusing on the Market Access Charge (MAC) discussed above. The authors state:

“The MAC would be a one-time fee paid on the purchase of any U.S. dollar financial asset by a foreign entity or individual. The MAC is designed to moderate foreign demand for dollar assets and realign the US dollar exchange rate to a trade-balancing level. The Baldwin-Hawley bill specifies that the Federal Reserve Board would set and manage the MAC to achieve current account balance within a five-year time horizon. Once balance was achieved, the Fed would manage the MAC to keep the US economy close to current account balance over time. “The Baldwin-Hawley bill specifies that the Federal Reserve Board would set and manage the MAC to achieve current account balance within a five-year time horizon. Once balance was achieved, the Fed would manage the MAC to keep the US economy close to current account balance over time.”

This section covers detailed economic models on how the MAC would affect different kinds of equity flows, such as bonds, Treasury notes

In Section 3, How the MAC Impacts Interest Rates, the authors “sought to estimate the impact of the MAC on the financial sector with a focus upon interest rates and government debt service costs.” They investigated and modeled the effect of a 1%, 3%, and 5% MAC on the nominal exchange rate, 10-year interest rates, and interest rate on outstanding Federal debt.

With regard to revenue the MAC would generate for the US Treasury, the authors comment,

“Though the MAC would reduce capital inflows significantly, our model suggests that even with a 5% MAC, gross equity inflows would continue at a rate in excess of $3 trillion a quarter, with inflows into debt securities at similar levels. MAC transaction fees, paid by foreign purchasers of US securities, would provide a large new source of revenue to the US Treasury. Table 4 shows that these revenues could reach $672 billion, equivalent to 19% of last year’s total federal tax revenue.”

In Section 4, Effects on the Economy, the authors state:

“…US producers of goods and services would gain market share in the US market and export markets. Our model estimates the impact of increased domestic production over the five-year period on US GDP and employment. In the case of a 5% MAC, the dollar’s exchange value would fall by 27…the more competitive dollar would balance trade, increasing exports by $765 billion or 29.5% over the baseline, and reducing imports by $167 billion (5.1%). The fall in imports is modest because while imports lose share in the domestic market, the rise in economic growth from the more competitive exchange rate boosts GDP, which leads to higher imports. But trade would be balanced. The GDP would rise by $1.01 trillion or 4.6%. Compared to the baseline forecast, the economy would create 4.9 million new jobs by 2025… the new jobs would be weighted towards internationally competitive sectors, notably manufacturing and natural resources, which offer higher pay (and often better benefit packages) than the average US job.”

The authors conclude that “The model shows large benefits to the US economy and the US Treasury. Further study is warranted and should be pursued.”

I would go one step further and say that the Baldwin-Hawley “Competitive Dollar for Jobs and Prosperity Act.” (S. 2357) should be released out of committee as soon as possible to be debated and then passed in the full session of the Senate. Reducing our trade deficit, increasing our GDP, and creating more higher-paying manufacturing jobs are important actions to be taken to create prosperity in America.

How much the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic has had on manufacturing depends on the state in which a manufacturer is located and what is the industry of the manufacturer.