Over the past three years, commenters have raked me over the coals for my opposition to the US cold war against China, particularly our economic sanctions, which go far beyond legitimate national security concerns. The single factor that is most often cited by China hawks is the PRC’s unwillingness to take a strong stand against Russia on the Ukraine War.
It is true that the US policy on Ukraine differs from China’s policy—we are far worse. Thus consider the recent UN vote on a resolution condemning the invasion and calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory. While China joined 65 countries in abstaining, the US joined Russia, Iran and North Korea in opposing the resolution:
The United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Iran and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries Monday against a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. The resolution passed overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly.
Only one of our allies joined us in this vote, and that seems to have been due to extreme pressure from the Trump administration:
Here’s a question I have for all of the people that have argued we need sanctions on China due to its ambivalence on the Ukraine War issue. What sort of sanctions do you favor being put on the US, now that our government is far more supportive of Russia’s policy than China ever was? Should the EU, Canada and Japan put even stricter sanctions on the US than on China?
China’s poor human rights record is also cited by cold warriors. But China’s single worst human rights violation–it’s decision to put roughly a million Uyghurs into concentration camps–was endorsed by Donald Trump during his first term in office. Once again, it’s difficult to see the argument for putting sanctions on a country because of concern over human rights, when the country considering sanctions endorsed those policies.
READER COMMENTS
Ben Y
Feb 24 2025 at 8:46pm
So up until a few weeks ago, you were perfectly fine with tariffs/sanctions on China?
Honestly now, your CCP sentiment is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
Scott Sumner
Feb 25 2025 at 11:51am
You seem to have difficulty with reading comprehension.
Andrew_FL
Feb 25 2025 at 1:44am
It’s not the biggest factor, it’s just the one that resonates with you the most personally, because, for some reason, you are hawkish about Russia but dovish about everything else.
Scott Sumner
Feb 25 2025 at 11:54am
I have exactly the same views regarding Russia and China. If China invaded Taiwan, I’d suggest we respond exactly as we did with Ukraine. It’s the rest of the world that has a wildly different view of the two cases, which is why people have trouble understanding my completely consistent views.
David S
Feb 25 2025 at 4:15am
I’ve lost track of who we’re at war with right now–Eurasia? EastAsia? Southern Oceania? Will I still get a tax credit if I buy a Tesla?
If American policy chaos persists I can see a scenario where China conquers Taiwan without firing a shot. All Xi has to do is promise them some level of security and land-use reform that allows for affordable housing.
Another scenario is Trump finding a way to follow through on his idea of selective default on U.S. bonds held by foreigners. I’m not sure how he would pull this off—might require pardoning Sam Bankman Fried to run the Fed or Treasury, but at this point little would surprise me. Tariffs are kid’s stuff at this point.
Mark Barbieri
Feb 25 2025 at 7:28am
Where have you been? These people are already trying to impose massive trade sanctions against the United States. They’ve slammed US manufacturing by restricting their access to steel and aluminum. They have effectively banned inexpensive EVs. I think they are imposing pretty severe sanctions on the US.
Scott Sumner
Feb 25 2025 at 11:55am
You have things exactly backward. The US started the trade war, and our allies are responding.
Dylan
Feb 25 2025 at 1:16pm
Admittedly, I also misread this at first. But, I believe that by “these people” Mark was referring to the U.S. government (of both administrations) that have put restrictions on importing cheap EVs and added tarrifs on the inputs that US manufacturers use to make products.
In short, I think you agree with each other.
Mark Barbieri
Feb 25 2025 at 2:30pm
Sorry. You missed my poor attempt at sarcasm. I was pointing out that the same people that are now supporting Russia (Trump and his fans) also support massive sanctions against the United States in the form of tariffs and trade barriers.
I’ve always found it fascinating that people will promote trade sanctions as a punishment against other countries and then turn around and support the same things for their own country oblivious to the fact they are punishing themselves.
bill
Feb 25 2025 at 6:18pm
Exactly
Scott Sumner
Feb 26 2025 at 1:08am
Sorry, I did miss your point. Now I see what you were getting at.
Dylan
Feb 25 2025 at 7:42am
As a young man, I thought that America was a country of lofty ideals. Ideals that we often had failed to live up to, but the thing that tied us together as a country was a shared belief in those basic ideals of liberty for all.
A lot of the actions that were taken after 9/11 shook that belief, But as morally reprehensible as I find torture, you could at least understand it that the people who authorized it and carried it out thought they were protecting lives.
But all of this, destroying the political world order, for what? How can any of these actions be seen as making America great again? And how is any of this consistent with those lofty ideals of the founders?
Scott Sumner
Feb 25 2025 at 11:56am
I feel your pain:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/pu3z4v/are_we_the_baddies_an_eternally_relatable_meme/
Jose Pablo
Feb 25 2025 at 11:38am
it’s decision to put roughly a million Uyghurs into concentration camps
This is, in terms of human rights, not so different from the forced displacement of two million Palestinians into camps in Egypt and Jordan.
Meanwhile, we may soon see sanctions imposed on European countries for allegedly failing to uphold the liberties of their far-right parties.
I don’t know—it’s a world in moral flux. You can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore.
Scott Sumner
Feb 25 2025 at 11:57am
“You can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore.”
I think we can, we simply choose to associate with the bad guys.
Jon Murphy
Feb 25 2025 at 12:30pm
Justifications for trade sanctions are just a thin veil for rent-seeking. It’s really not much different than the Japanese internment camps during World War 2: military security was just a thin veil to transfer weath and property from Japanese to Americans (and, given how many were Americans, from Americans to Americans).
Travis Allison
Feb 25 2025 at 1:21pm
To me, it’s hilarious how Trump buys into this conception of himself as this all powerful deal maker and he can bend people to make deals against their perceived interests if he just makes demands. His reaction to Jordan’s and Egypt’s refusal to accept 2 million Palestinians is priceless.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/us/politics/trump-gaza-egypt-jordan.html
Russia is out to fatally weaken Ukraine as a country. Russia will continue to grind Ukraine through attrition unless Russia’s greater losses become a political liability for Putin. There’s no reason for Putin to stop the war now since he has an advantage in his mind and doesn’t care about the losses of his troops. There’s no deal that Putin will currently accept that Ukraine will also accept, no matter how much Trump bloviates.
Our best chance for stopping the war is to give Ukraine enough arms and tech such that Ukraine’s fatalities become minimal and Russia’s losses grow.
bill
Feb 25 2025 at 6:20pm
Well said!!
Lizard Man
Feb 26 2025 at 11:06am
The strategic rationale for sanctions on China would be to accelerate friend shoring. One’s view on the wisdom of this depends on how likely you think that the PRC will try to conquer Taiwan in the nearish future. If you think that is pretty likely (say greater than a 20% chance of occurrence in the next 10 years if things continue on their current path) then it makes sense to decouple from China and put in place policies that result in factories being built outside of China’s sphere of influence. Thr world will have great need of factories and engineers to deal with the chaos of a PRC attempt to conquer Taiwan, as Russia would be quite likely to try to invade some of its neighbors at the same time, and North Korea and Iran might do the same, and Central Asian countries might also decide that is a good time to fight a war over borders, and depending on the leadership of Pakistan, they might too.
Scott Sumner
Feb 26 2025 at 12:58pm
I have exactly the opposite view. If you are worried about a Chinese attack on Taiwan it makes sense to have our economies become much more entangled, so that the subsequent economic sanctions would do a lot of harm. If you isolate China that makes war more likely (as we saw after imposing sanctions on Japan in the late 1930s.)
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