There should be no doubt in the minds of Americans that China has not been living up to the obligations and continues to ignore the rules of the World Trade Organizations (WTO) on bilateral trade with the U.S. and global trade with Western trading partners. For decades, the Chinese Communist centrally managed capitalist economy has been subsidizing inefficient domestic industries, dumping cheaply produced goods such as steel and iron on global markets, and erecting barriers to protect their domestic markets from foreign goods and services.

And, the U.S. and Western governments and global corporations, for decades, have taken the three monkeys approach to confronting China of “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil” to addressing the unfair trading practices. The inept response from governments and large corporations are because of the desire to access the lucrative and rapidly growing Chinese domestic market. Over the decades, this approached has proved an ineffective strategy and has only encouraged additional bad behavior and strong arming by the Chinese.

Despite Chinese Communist Party leaders’ continued denials of the bad behavior, there is no doubt that China is coercing the transfer of U.S. and Western technology, and stealing Western Intellectual Property (IP). Again, over the past several decades, Chinese rapid rise to becoming the world’s second largest economy by GDP and their rapid technological advancements as a global leader in artificial intelligence can be directly contributed to their successful pilfering of IP and forcing technology transfers.

Additionally, for decades, multiple U.S. administrations have avoided directly confronting the Chinese regarding their unfair trading practices and outright theft IP and forced technology transfers. The current U.S. – China trade reality is a result of policies of appeasement by administrations of both parties.

The Chinese have deliberately practiced bilateral and multilateral trade in a manner that have created an un-level and unfair trade environment built on theft, coercion, subsidies of domestic enterprises and dumping excesses below market priced goods on global markets that effectively decimates competition.