Cold War Lessons for a Constrained America

Richard Gray is an analyst who works for a foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C.

After decades of trade liberalization, the United States is reverting to a policy of economic containment towards China.

Until recently, the U.S.-China bilateral relationship was defined by a tacit exchange of American market access and Chinese industrial development. As Secretary of State John Kerry tellingly put it in 2015: “On a level playing field, our growth contributes to yours, and your growth in China contributes to ours. Your nation has opened up to the world and you have lifted 500 million people out of poverty, one of the most remarkable occurrences in human history.”

This arrangement of economic integration was by no means inevitable. At the height of the Korean War, the United States…