The Cost: Trump, China, and American Revival
The Cost: Trump, China, and American Revival by Maria Bartiromo and James Freeman.
Despite Anthony C. Sutton’s later pulp non-fiction and the faultiness of his Magnum Opus, his early work is scholarly and important (e.g., “Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development” [3 vols.], and “Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution”). We shall get back to this shortly.
Interestingly, Maria Bartiromo is known to sometimes espouse a different view of the world than many of the other members of the two globalist organizations that she is a member of (the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum) while James Freeman (a Yale graduate on the board of the William F. Buckley Jr. program) is also known to provide deep editorial and historical contexts to world affairs from her position.
Here the two have collaborated to produce a book with a thesis that the United States has reached a critical inflection point where the old approach of globalist cooperation, particularly with China that began in the Nixon and Kissinger era, has become a direct threat to American economic and national security.
They chronicle decades of Chinese Communist Party exploiting international trade rules they blame for America’s dangerous dependence and a hollowing out of the American middle class. Furthermore, they posit that Donald Trump’s presidency represents a necessary change aimed at dismantling the status quo through aggressive deregulation and nationalist economic policies to fix the problem. They frame the Trump administration’s trade policy and domestic tax reforms as a coherent strategy to restore American sovereignty and force a “re-shoring” of industry that would benefit the American worker and national interest over a global elite intent on increasing their personal wealth as fast as possible in a non-symbiotic manner.
Specifically, the authors argue for an end to turning over Western competitive advantages (e.g., technology, science, medicine, etc.) along with the jobs and work of U.S. citizens to build foreign nations into our greatest economic and military competitors in the world (a view that Anthony C. Sutton also warned of).
They outline various ways this is presently being accomplished (e.g., deregulation, tax cuts, tariffs, supply chain repatriation, etc.) which is explained in more detail.
The authors contribute to the ongoing discussion from their own worldview; however, there remains much more to consider when studying the complex, wide-ranging topics they present.
One of these threads of study involve following the behavior of U.S. politicians and wealthy elitists over time as they work together to profit in building up foreign nations with very different worldviews than ours into America’s greatest competitors and threats.
The comparative analysis of historically similar behavior and consequence with respect to this topic is desirable. Analysis of this genre’s books and the central thesis of earlier scholarly works like Sutton’s reveal a fault in Western international political economy behavior.
In this comparative example, although written decades apart and addressing different adversaries (China versus the Soviet Union), both works read like a prequel and sequel showing how the transfer of Western capital and technology via various means and mechanisms, the offshoring of jobs, the inward migration of foreign firms to compete with domestic companies, the importation of replacement labor, supportive political lobbying and campaign funding toward policy capture for this, etc. threaten Western economic and national security.
Setting aside a debate on specific individual and organizational culpability, it is evident that Western powers twice facilitated the rise of their primary geopolitical rivals into existential threats during the 20th and 21st centuries. Historical precedent suggests we were fortunate to emerge victorious from the first iteration and fortunate to remain resiliently intact during the second.
Other popular authors who’s publications echo Bartiromo and Freeman’s book include James Mann, Michael Pillsbury, Graham Allison, Stephen Walt, etc.
Maria Bartiromo has garnered significant professional accolades, including two Emmy Awards and a Gracie Award for her documentary work and financial reporting. She graduated from New York University in journalism and economics and was on the NYU Board of Trustees with tenure as an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business.
James Freeman graduated from Yale College where he serves on the board of the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program. His professional credentials bridge the gap between financial regulation and journalism.
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