Obama Doesn’t Want to Upset the Chinese

The folks at Red State have noticed a troubling quote from Barack Obama, regarding his views on how to deal with China:

“It’s very hard to tell your banker that he’s wrong,” Obama said, after talking about the need to restore America’s stance in the world, “And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we’re borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China…” The junior Senator from Illinois has a particularly tricky balancing act when it comes to the subject of the Olympics: Chicago is vying to host the 2016 games and one of Obama’s top campaign advisors and close friends, Valerie Jarrett, is the vice chair of Chicago’s bid committee.

Jon Henke memorably and succinctly pointed out why China could not follow through on its threat to sell off U.S. securities last year. If China attempted a massive sell-off, they’d earn back pennies on the dollar. Further, it would strengthen the Yuan against the dollar, dealing their export-driven economy a serious blow. For these reasons, most economists doubt it would ever happen. The U.S.-China relationship may be the most important one to get right. That’s why it’s doubly troubling that Obama casts about for such a far-fetched excuse to fail to defend U.S. interests vis-a-vis China. But as ABC News points out, it may not be that bad; it could just be that Obama wants to help out a friend.

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