This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Charleston, S.C. • If there was ever a week for the Republican presidential candidates to talk tough on China, this was it: Spurred by the stock market's wild ride, they lashed out at the world's most populous nation.
Wisconsin's Scott Walker demanded President Barack Obama cancel an upcoming state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Mike Huckabee said the next president should "build America's economy, not China's or Mexico's." Donald Trump said the U.S. economy needs to "do a big uncoupling pretty soon, before it's too late."
It's rhetoric that doesn't always square with the realities of the relationship between the world's two largest economies, said experts on America's ties with China, even if it does make for nifty campaign sound bites.
"When you're in the early phases of the primary season, and you don't have a lot in the way of foreign policy bona fides, a surefire applause line is to go to the extreme — and in the case of China that's always a very easy thing to do," said Jon Huntsman, a former Republican governor of Utah and U.S. ambassador to China under Obama.
No candidate went further than Trump, whose pledge to bring back to the U.S. the roughly 2 million jobs lost to China since 1999 is a centerpiece of his campaign. "Not only now have they taken our jobs ... but now they are pulling us down with them," he said Monday amid a worldwide swoon in stock prices.
But "uncoupling" the U.S. from China as Trump proposes would mean undoing the largest trade relationship in the world: $592 billion in goods and services were exchanged last year. While most of that consists of U.S. imports of Chinese products, China is still the United States' third-largest export market.
Apple's second-largest market for its iPhones, iPads and computers is China. Said Apple CEO Tim Cook this week, "I get updates on our performance in China every day."
"It would basically be economic suicide to cut yourself off from the second-largest and fastest-growing economy in the world," said Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Walker said Obama needs to have some "backbone" and call off the planned visit of China's Xi next month — a response, he said, to China's "increasing attempts to undermine U.S. interests."
But the Wisconsin governor didn't say how he would settle issues between the nations without such face-to-face meetings. Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, called Walker's idea "the nuclear option" of diplomacy.
"You can't just close the door and take your toys and go home," she said. "That's not the way that effective international policy is made."