{Like Britain before it, America only became a cheerleader of free trade after its industrial position was secured. German economist Friedrich List wrote of British trade policy in 1841:

"It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitan doctrine of Adam Smith, and of the cosmopolitan tendencies of his great contemporary William Pitt, and all his successors in the British Government administrations."

Any nation that by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her can do nothing wiser than to throw away the ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade and to declare in penitent tones that she hitherto wandered in the path of errors and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth."

This “clever device” was employed by American policymakers as they engaged in what List and his modern champion, economist Ha-Joon Chang, called “kicking away the ladder.” We are now certain that karma exists because the new champions of free trade, sending the biggest delegation to Davos and most vocally opposing the tariff curtain descending on the world, are … you know who.}

{The Mandarin word for cadre, 干部, has a connotation of action from the character 干, meaning to do, to act, to undertake. It is difficult to think of cadres in China as mere bureaucrats. The government expects much more from them than formulating and promulgating policy. They are expected not only to formulate policies but also to drive outcomes, whatever they may be – clean up a stream, shut down germanium exports, increase university enrollment, build high speed rail.}

https://asiatimes.com/2024/01/__trashed-21/