An Easy Populist Target

With a struggling economy, Communist/currency manipulating/rising military power/etc. China is all too easy of a populist target for the US.

From Bloomberg:

Photo from The Center for American Progress

The U.S. view that China is keeping its currency undervalued in order to boost exports will foster a “more contentious” relationship between the two nations, said Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia in Hong Kong.

The convergence of mounting U.S. unemployment and next year’s Congressional elections will make it easy for both Republicans and Democrats to criticize China, Roach said in a Bloomberg Television interview aired today in New York.

“It will get more contentious as we move into 2010,” he said. “There’ll be a lot of cries on both sides of the aisle to do something about the plight of the American worker. China is, unfortunately, the whipping boy in many of these discussions.”

The U.S. Treasury Department yesterday criticized China in a semiannual report to Congress, saying “the recent lack of flexibility of the renminbi exchange rate and China’s renewed accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves risk unwinding some of the progress made in reducing imbalances.” The Treasury stopped short of branding China a manipulator of its yuan, also known as the renminbi.

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It really is easier to blame others for one's ills. We still aren't seeing the full ramifications of the the bad loans and mortgages we've taken. We still don't have the ability to part with dinosaur corporations that have let the world pass them by. And we still don't understand why and how the incompetent leaders controlled by Wall Street that we've elected this past decade have dug us a gargantuan hole.

No, our troubles are being caused by the evil Chinese...

Unfortunately, I fully expect this rhetoric to convince the masses that they don't have to change the "American way of life" and that the problems our country has are due to reasons beyond our control. And instead of hunkering down and getting serious about preparing for a future that includes a very competitive China, America will continue to let its belief in its own superiority and infallibility blind it from addressing its real problems.