by Michael Stumo: China’s heavy handed tactics to prevent stock market trading that Communist Party leaders don’t like are a reminder that it’s is really great that China is a member of the WTO since 2000. So they can be the free market country they are today, spurring American exports and preserving American jobs!
Here is an example of that WTO-created free market-ish behavior that Bill Clinton promised us.
BEIJING — The police have been dropping in on investment firms and downloading their transaction records. Senior executives at China’s biggest investment bank have been arrested on suspicion of illegal trading. A business journalist has been detained and shown apologizing on national television for writing an article that could have hurt the market.
The Communist Party’s response to China’s monthslong stock market crisis has been swift and forceful. In addition to spending as much as $235 billion to buy shares and bolster prices, the authorities have imposed a range of extraordinary restrictions on the sale of stocks — and backed them with the full weight of a security apparatus usually more focused on political dissent than equity trades.
So apparently the involvement of the Chinese Communist Party’s internal security apparatus and police force to require stock traders to comply with government trading restrictions is the free market we’ve all been waiting for.
Bill Clinton also promised that helping China join the WTO would “increase U.S. jobs and reduce our trade deficit.”
Bill also said “We’ll be able to export products [to China] without exporting jobs.”
You can laugh before you cry. Hillary should address whether Bill made a mistake as she seeks the Democratic nomination.
