Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would respond to the member's question as follows.
Let me just talk about the case I know best, that of the United States.
I was a member of the Clinton administration. I did not have any responsibility for China policy, but it is certainly the case that the major thrust of the Clinton administration's China policy was to open up world markets to China and vice versa. This policy culminated in the accession of China to the WTO in 2001. I believe that American policy-makers dramatically underestimated the impact of Chinese competition on the U.S. manufacturing sector. It is a matter of fact that between 2001 and 2007, before the great recession hit, the United States lost 3.3 million manufacturing jobs. That was more than 15% of its manufacturing base. We did not have policies in place to mitigate either the economic or the social consequences of that disruption.
I believe it is too late to reverse those consequences. I do not believe that the effort to dial the economic clock back 25 years and restore the iron and steel industry, the aluminum industry and mass manufacturing to the place that they enjoyed as recently as the 1990s can succeed. That's a policy of nostalgia.
All the horses have left the barn, but one reason that Mr. Trump is president is that he promised to do something about that. I believe that any leader of the United States or any country facing massive dislocation because of the disruption of the manufacturing sector has to have a plausible plan to address that.