As the administration tries to get tough on China, it has abandoned the Republican Party’s commitment to free trade and free markets.
It slapped widespread tariffs on dozens of products and market sectors, a move traditional conservatives derided as a regressive tax on American consumers.
Conservatives celebrated when China promised mandatory purchases from U.S. farms, but those “required” purchases turned out to be an unenforceable shopping list, and exports to China have fallen in each of the last two years. It all amounts to a pack of failed ideas and empty slogans that don’t feel anything like “winning.”
But the blue ribbon for “not thinking things through” surely goes to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who wants to marry his longstanding election-year grudge against Hollywood with his anti-China credentials by barring any federal “cooperation” with films that are somehow edited or altered to be allowed into China’s domestic market.
But, like the administration’s self-destructive trade wars, Cruz’s so-called “SCRIPT Act” is destined to set back the very objectives he claims to support.
It’s a sad state of affairs when governments fear creative expression. History shows us that censorship is ultimately futile, and it surely will be in the war of ideas between China and the West. If our government can abide Michael Moore, the Chinese might consider whether they show their own weakness by overreacting to Tom Cruise or “South Park.”
Moreover, Cruz’s bizarre legislation won’t do anything to rein in China’s censors — indeed, it imposes no requirements on China of any kind. It simply makes it harder for American companies to break into one of the world’s fastest growing markets with a host of implications he hasn’t considered that the rest of us should fear.
First, by trying to wage cultural war, Cruz would lose the economic one. Entertainment is an American export champion and one of the few sources of strength in our trade with the People’s Republic.
It creates more than 2.5 million U.S. jobs, produces $16.3 billion in exports, and runs a $9 billion trade surplus. Cutting off our industry from the Chinese audience hobbles our longstanding leadership in this space.
Second, in economic terms, Cruz’s crude blockade is a hidden but direct subsidy to China’s domestic motion picture studios, who would enjoy protection from American competitors courtesy of his bill.
The senator’s half-baked attempt to smear Hollywood with the China brush would turn the Chinese film industry into another Airbus, a competitor propped up by foreign governments to the detriment of U.S. industry and jobs.
Third, forcing the secretary of Commerce to audit and report on U.S. filmmakers and their editing choices and decisions, it would transform this most business-friendly government agency into a regulatory snitch that lacks the competence to do the job asked of it.
I served in the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration and know that renowned Commerce secretaries would recoil at this absurd, anti-business requirement.
And finally, and most important, Cruz’s attempt to portray the film industry he despises as pro-China collaborators would actually set back the cause of freedom.
The export of American culture is the foremost weapon in America’s arsenal of “soft power.” The Soviet Union’s fall was made inevitable, in part, by exposure to depictions of American life — from blue jeans to rock n’ roll — its citizens encountered in American entertainment.
Today, our films and television are watched by North Koreans, Iranians and Cubans despite their despotic rulers’ attempts to forbid them.
These cultural exports, and the image of America as a place where a good life can be lived, prosperity achieved and people respected — despite the steady flow of news clips of men of color brazenly murdered on the street that foreign despots love to parade to their people — is an asset we undermine at our own peril.
No one abhors censorship more than U.S. filmmakers, who often refuse to make changes sought by China. But when requested changes are minor and can be accommodated without doing violence to the values or message of a film, negotiated engagement is often the better course. We should trust their judgment.
Instead, like the Chinese government he claims to oppose, Cruz seeks to control the creative industries through government edict.
The paradox is lost on him, but it should not be lost on us.
