Closing the China Barn Door

We have a saying in the U.S that translates,  "When the horse has already left the barn, it is too late to close the door."  This is the arguable position of negotiators meeting with China's leadership this week in what is euphemistically called the Strategic and Economic Dialogue.  For those who might not have heard of it, it is a regular meeting every year and this time it is in China.  The US Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary are representing the US.

A few news outlets have covered the stories coming out and there are many views of this meeting being expressed from different slants.  The Wall Street Journal and NPR have somewhat different stories about the same meeting, but both mention steel production and the South China Sea.  The US has slapped tariffs on cold rolled steel, and the Chinese have promised "not to expand steel production" a rediculous statement, since the problem of steel production in China is not capacity;  it is over capacity.  They are keeping their steel industry going in spite of its being pumped into the world's markets and losing money on most of it.  This is the classic definition of dumping.  With the new tariffs it will be more expensive, but that is a relative thing in a declining price climate driven by over production.

The US, in the week before this meeting was telling China that it would not accept an aircraft identification zone in the South China Sea.  A nice sentiment, but for over a year now, China has been warning aircraft entering the spaces around their new little islands that they could not fly through the airspace.  That is short of an idenfication zone, but not by much.  Drawing a red line with this as a premise is not very good diplomacy.  They are enforcing one now, without calling it that, and they are raising the ante by putting anti-aircraft and fighters on some of those little spots on the ocean.  They are there for a reason.

The US has accepted China's statements on issues like this for most of the time John Kerry has been Secretary of State.  The ability of this State Department to allow this kind of nonsense is not representing the country very well.  It sounds like a phrase we heard often in the days when Mr. Kerry was throwing his military medals on the table when he was called as a witness before Congress   - peace at any price.