Arthur Kroeber

The most desirable outcome would be some kind of an agreement under which we create a broader permission structure for Chinese companies to invest in the United States in a lot of these key industries that we're talking about.

I think that's good for the United States because I think it is reasonable for us to try and rebuild certain aspects of our industrial manufacturing system.

I think we let those atrophy too much.

So selectively, I think it does make sense for us to try and rebuild that.

And rebuilding that should incorporate the best anywhere in the world.

And some of that is now coming from China.

And I also think just in terms of

enhancing mutual understanding and getting better communication channels.

Investment is even more than trade, is a very good communication channel because it forces you to go to the other guy's place and put down roots there and figure out how things work and figure out ways to communicate with one another.

Now, the obstacles to that are enormous, both because the US narrative that this is intrinsically unsafe and because I think the Chinese will be very reluctant to allow a lot of their technology high flyers to go and set up in the US and risk having their technology leak away there too.

So I'm not saying that that is easy or achievable, and certainly not in a few months.

This would be over the course of a year or two or three, you might be able to negotiate some terms of engagement there.

I mean, the big problem I think that China creates for the world as a whole right now is this fact that they just are unwilling or unable to generate enough domestic demand to keep their own economy running at full steam.

That's bad for their own economy.

And it creates a lot of friction in the rest of the world because what it then means is that companies that can't sell in China are forced to export their surplus production.

And this creates rising trade frictions, not just with the United States, but with lots and lots of countries.

And it does sort of contribute to the narrative that...

that China is not really all that interested in creating a situation where everyone benefits from their growth.

It's much more of a, we're in this for ourselves.

So I think it would be helpful for the world economy, helpful for the Chinese people and helpful for general stability if the Chinese could recognize that they need to do a lot more to promote the demand side of their economy.