NYT: Survey - Americans Now Considering Asia More Important Than Europe

[pampango]

This year, the survey showed that a majority of U.S. respondents (51 percent) felt that Asian countries like China, Japan and South Korea were more important to national interests than the countries of the European Union (38 percent). The results are a significant reversal in attitudes among Americans from 2004, when a majority of U.S. respondents (54 percent) viewed the countries of Europe as more important to their vital interests than the countries of Asia.

The report showed how a generation gap has emerged among Americans, with most young people aged 18 to 24 having a favorable opinion of China (59 percent) but older people, aged 45 to 54, feeling less so (33 percent). Seventy-six percent of younger Americans identified Asia as more important to their national interests, as opposed to 31 percent of Europeans who felt that way.

In contrast, the Europeans see China as an economic opportunity rather than a threat. Majorities in The Netherlands, Sweden, Britain and Germany said they considered China an economic opportunity. This was the reverse of the United States, where 63 percent of respondents felt that China was an economic threat and 31 percent saw it as an opportunity.

In regard to efforts to support democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, 62 percent of European respondents said they believed that the European Union should be involved; 29 percent said the Union should stay out completely. In the United States, 43 percent believed in playing a role, and 50 percent said America should stay out completely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world/survey-shows-americans-now-considering-asia-more-important-than-europe.html?_r=1

[Javaman]

1. I bow before our new Chinese overlords.

You can all thank NAFTA and the WTO.

Where do I sign up for the low wage crappy working condition job? oh wait...

[pampango]

2. Most Europeans and young Americans would seem to disagree and view Asia positively.

How is NAFTA involved in the economic rise of Asia? Without NAFTA China would still be a post-Mao economic basket case.

Could the creation of the EU as a continental tariff-free zone also responsible for the increase in Asian prosperity? Or was NAFTA more important to Asians?

Hey, blame FDR for the WTO. It was his idea to create multilateral institutions to govern international trade and finance (the Bretton Woods conference) in order to avoid the tariff wars started by republicans - see the Fordney-McCumber-Coolidge Tariff of 1922 and the Smoot-Hawley-Hoover Tariff Act of 1930. Before FDR there was no IMF, no World Bank, no GATT, no WTO.

[Javaman]

3. Clinton approved of chinese admission to the WTO.

NAFTA created the vacuum for low wage jobs here in the states.

Dovetail that with Chinese admission to the WTO and you have the perfect recipe for destroying the American economy.

Frankly, I could care less of china was a post-mao basket case, the fact is corporations are sending, what were once good union jobs here, over seas to be made by less than low wage workers in china.

[pampango]

4. If China had not entered the WTO the economic results may have been quite the same. Witness Russia.

It is the largest country/economy not in the WTO (though it is trying to get in) and we import 4 times as much from them as we export to them, exactly the same ratios as we have with China. Keeping countries out of the WTO does not necessarily make trade ratios any better. Russia is not nearly as populous nor its economy as productive as China, so the numbers are not as big but the our import/export ratios are almost identical with the two countries.

Once China became productive (it was always big and poor) it was bound to be a major factor in the world economy whether it was in the WTO or not. The only way to keep China's economy from affecting us would have been to keep them a "post-mao basket case". Too bad perhaps that there was no Mao Jr. to take over and keep China poor, under control and out of our lives. (Who knew that Mao was so good for the American capitalist economy? ;) Thanks for everything, Chairman but you could have learned something from the Dear Leader in North Korea about passing control on to your heirs so that China could still be making revolution instead of exports.)

BTW, our best trade performance is with the 17 "free trade" countries. Our trade deficit with them in 2010 was 6.5% of the total amount of trade. With the rest of the world our trade deficit was 27.3% of total trade. And our trade performance is worst with the 30+ countries that are not in the WTO. With them our trade deficit was 51.9% of the total amount of trade.