August 10, 2025 — The Day We Lost the Factory Floor

#Triangulation

When President Bill Clinton pushed for China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2000, he sold it as a win-win for globalization: open up China, create new markets for American goods, and—somehow—also safeguard U.S. jobs. Instead, he detonated the industrial heart of America. 🏭🇨🇳

So we ask: Why the hell did he do this? And what the hell did he think was going to happen?

The Pitch

On March 8, 2000, Clinton addressed the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, urging Congress to approve Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China. His promise? “Bringing China into the WTO… will advance the goals America has worked for in the world for the past half-century.” He assured the American people that this would not be a race to the bottom: “If you don’t give China normal trading rights, we lose the opportunity to export American products” (Clinton, 2000).

He didn’t say American jobs would become China’s top import.

The Fallout: Offshoring and Deindustrialization

In the aftermath of PNTR and China’s WTO accession in 2001, offshoring soared. A landmark 2016 MIT study estimates that at least 2 million U.S. jobs—mostly in manufacturing—were lost due to the “China shock” (Autor, Dorn, & Hanson, 2016). Once-thriving towns in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania collapsed into economic ruin. Clinton didn’t just fail to anticipate this—he actively ignored warnings.

Who Warned Him?

Labor unions like the AFL-CIO and progressive economists sounded alarms in the 1990s, warning that China would not abide by WTO labor or environmental standards. Even Democratic senators like Byron Dorgan cautioned that the deal would gut American industry and empower a non-democratic regime with little regard for worker rights.

But Clinton, ever the triangulator, sided with multinational corporations like Walmart, which stood to benefit from cheap Chinese manufacturing. Walmart’s headquarters, not coincidentally, are in Bentonville, Arkansas—just a few miles from Clinton’s political power base.

Was this all just a game to help Walmart and friends? One could argue yes. In the 2000s, Walmart became the single largest importer of Chinese goods in the United States (Fishman, 2006). Coincidence? You decide.

Tech Transfers and the Blue-Water Navy

The Clinton administration didn’t just throw open the trade doors—they helped China march into the 21st century. U.S. companies, under Clinton-era reforms, transferred technology and built joint ventures that gave China advanced tools for manufacturing, aerospace, and, yes, military infrastructure. By the mid-2000s, China was building its first modern aircraft carrier and expanding its blue-water navy, thanks in part to technologies they acquired from Western partners.

You’re telling me nobody saw this coming?

The Democrats and China: Strange Bedfellows

Now Democrats talk tough on China. They rage about TikTok, intellectual property theft, and the Uyghur genocide. But who ushered China into the world economy? Who lobbied for PNTR? Who legitimized the Communist Party as a WTO peer?

Bill Clinton.

And here’s the punchline: there’s no mechanism to remove China from the WTO. None. Not even for genocide, not even for slave labor. The Democrats can’t walk back this historic mistake, and the American worker has been paying the price for 25 years.

What Did Clinton Think Would Happen?

Clinton imagined a fantasy-world where economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization in China. He claimed: “The more China opens to the world, the more the world will open China” (Clinton, 2000). Instead, China became richer and more authoritarian. The government doubled down on surveillance, censorship, and military aggression.

What Clinton missed—or ignored—is that China was never trying to be the next America. It was trying to complete Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”—not through collective farming, but by leapfrogging into a modern economy through foreign capital, open markets, and global legitimacy.

And we gave it to them on a silver platter.

References

  • Autor, D., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. (2016). The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade. Annual Review of Economics, 8, 205–240. https://doi.org/10.3386/w21906
  • Clinton, W. J. (2000, March 8). Speech on China Trade Bill. Johns Hopkins SAIS. Retrieved from https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov
  • Fishman, C. (2006). The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works—and How It’s Transforming the American Economy. Penguin Press.