Donald Trump On Intellectual Property: China Is Bad
As you may have heard, in an effort to refocus his Presidential campaign, this week, Donald Trump erased his original economic plan (literally, it just disappeared from his website) and launched a brand new plan with a speech in Detroit. The speech came across as a mishmash of semi-random ideas, pulled from whatever that crazy list of folks he's calling his advisors are these days. However, for the folks around here, what may be interesting is that this is really the first time I can recall Trump even mentioning intellectual property, and his entire summary of it is basically "China bad, we need more protection."
The trade deals that the US has been negotiating historically won't help stop that. They'll only encourage more of it. Of course, it's doubtful that Trump really cares about or understands the policy implications of this. I doubt he cares at all about intellectual property. This was just a new speech for him to give in an effort to refocus the campaign from the non-stop ridiculous comments last week to try to sound more serious this week and to pretend there's an actual plan.
Of course, Hillary Clinton's intellectual property platform is a complete joke too, but it feels like War & Peace compared to what little Trump has said on the subject. And people wonder why our new t-shirt about the election is selling so well...
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At the center of my plan is trade enforcement with China. This alone could return millions of jobs into our country. They break the rules in every way imaginable. China engages in illegal export subsidies, prohibited currency manipulation, and rampant theft of intellectual property. They also have no real environmental or labor protections, further undercutting American workers. Just enforcing intellectual property rules alone could save millions of American jobs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, improved protection of America's intellectual property in China would produce more than 2 million more jobs right here in the United States. Add to that the saved jobs from cracking down on currency cheating and product dumping, and we will bring trillions of dollars in new wealth and wages back to the United States.These are kind of old and obsolete talking points. China has been ramping up its intellectual property enforcement over the past few years after many, many years of the US screaming about Chinese copycats. Except, as we've noted, our own government's shortsighted focus on "stopping IP theft in China" actually handed China a fantastic tool to enable on-the-sly protectionism against foreign companies. China has begun "respecting" intellectual property in the form of building up a massive patent portfolio and then suing foreign companies (mainly American) and winning.
The trade deals that the US has been negotiating historically won't help stop that. They'll only encourage more of it. Of course, it's doubtful that Trump really cares about or understands the policy implications of this. I doubt he cares at all about intellectual property. This was just a new speech for him to give in an effort to refocus the campaign from the non-stop ridiculous comments last week to try to sound more serious this week and to pretend there's an actual plan.
Of course, Hillary Clinton's intellectual property platform is a complete joke too, but it feels like War & Peace compared to what little Trump has said on the subject. And people wonder why our new t-shirt about the election is selling so well...
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story