"Free Trade" Has Its Limits

Buchanan:

[The] China that has emerged from a quarter century of American indulgence, patronage and tutelage since Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese tiger is all grown up, and it's not cuddly anymore.

And with Beijing's threat to use its monopoly of rare-earth materials to bend nations to its will, how does the Milton Friedmanite free-trade ideology of the Republican Party, which fed Beijing $2 trillion in trade surpluses at America's expense over two decades, look now?

How do all those lockstep Republican votes for Most Favored Nation status for Beijing, ushering her into the World Trade Organization and looking the other way as China dumped into our markets, thieved our technology and carted off our factories look today?

It's useful to pay attention to PRC, which has taken mercantilism to a new paradigm...

UPDATE: And on the topic of that mercantilism and its results in the USA, see Ticker here.