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The Ben Shapiro Show

Ep. 2330 - What Do We Do About CHINA?

09 Dec 2025

Transcription

Chapter 1: What strategy is China using to influence global markets?

0.031 - 14.689 Ben Shapiro

Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, China is growing by leaps and bounds in terms of manufacturing. What does that actually mean? How should the United States actually orient its national security strategy to stop China? What does that mean for Russia? We'll get into the weeds on all of this. How do we stop China?

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Chapter 2: How should the U.S. adjust its national security strategy regarding China?

14.97 - 30.046 Ben Shapiro

How do we stop Russia? How do we strengthen America in the world first? This year, bring me with you for all your holiday travel. What could be more fun? Download that Daily Wire Plus app and take the show everywhere you go. Inside the app, tap follow under my picture. You will get notifications the second I go live or drop a new episode.

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Chapter 3: What are the implications of China's economic growth model?

30.406 - 40.395 Ben Shapiro

Step away anytime. Come back exactly where you left off. Plus, you can watch the same clips everybody is arguing about on social media without having to suffer through social media. You can even download episodes for offline listening.

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40.535 - 47.642 Ben Shapiro

The app is where our community lives, chatting live during shows, sharing ideas, debating the big questions, and because it's ours, it can't be canceled, censored, or shut down.

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Chapter 4: How does the U.S. relationship with Russia impact its stance on China?

47.922 - 69.481 Ben Shapiro

Download that Daily Wire Plus app right now in the App Store, Google Play, Roku, Samsung, and more. The United States right now is facing down an existential threat. That existential threat, of course, does come from a lack of willpower. It comes from a doubt about what America is. But in terms of foreign policy, that existential threat comes from a team-up that has been growing.

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That team-up is between China, which is really the sponsor state of the anti-American bloc, along with its friends like Russia and Iran. The existential threat doesn't mean that China is going to attack the United States. It does mean that

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81.672 - 101.05 Ben Shapiro

that as the United States recedes from the world, as Russia expands its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, as China expands its sphere of influence, not just in the Far East, but also in Africa, across the rest of Asia, into South America, the United States is going to be in the unenviable position of having to withdraw from the world.

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101.13 - 109.958 Ben Shapiro

And a United States that is no longer able to guarantee freedom of the seas, a United States with no economic allies, a United States that is sort of a secondary partner

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Chapter 5: What role do tariffs play in U.S.-China relations?

109.938 - 121.912 Ben Shapiro

as opposed to China being a primary partner for all the rest of these countries, is a United States that has an economy that is shrinking, a United States that is forced within its own borders, and that is a problem. That is not a good thing, that is a problem.

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There is this bizarre notion that has arisen on the right that if the United States were to be essentially autarkic, if the United States were to withdraw from the rest of the world, suddenly things would get better, that the amount that we expend in foreign aid, for example, or military expenditure,

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is a complete waste of money if we just spend that money at home then magically everything gets better the problem of course is that the world is interconnected the reason that you are able to obtain better cheaper products that make your life easier every single day is because the interconnection of world trade makes that possible and that of course is only possible because of the power of the united states economy and the power of the united states military why do i bring that up well because china

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163.938 - 180.795 Ben Shapiro

seems to be posing a broader and broader threat. And yet, there is a bizarre unwillingness on the left to acknowledge the threat that is China. And on the right, there seems to be an unwillingness to deal with the actual realities of what it would mean to face down China in a responsible and coherent fashion.

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So, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that China is actually growing at the expense of the rest of the world. According... to Greg Ip writing for the Wall Street Journal. Who has contributed more to the rest of the world's growth this year, China or the United States? The answer is the United States, and it's not even close. Even as the U.S.

199.972 - 216.658 Ben Shapiro

rolls out tariffs, its imports are up 10% so far this year from a year earlier. And as China moralizes against protectionism, its imports are down 3% in dollar terms. The US figures might be an anomaly, reflecting people attempting to get around the tariffs by importing product before the tariffs went into effect, but China's are not.

217.519 - 235.103 Ben Shapiro

In the past five years, its export volumes have soared, while imports have flatlined. China is swallowing up a growing share of the world's market for manufactured goods. This reveals an uncomfortable truth. Beijing is pursuing a beggar-thy-neighbor growth model at everyone else's expense. According to economists at Goldman Sachs,

235.623 - 257.547 Ben Shapiro

1% more output in China in the past would raise the rest of the world's output by 0.2% as it pulled in imports because we would then export to China. But as China has raised its own tariff barriers instead, the relationship has turned negative. China's growth is now being driven by its leadership's determination and capability to further advance manufacturing competitiveness and boost exports.

257.611 - 267.385 Ben Shapiro

So for the rest of the world, theoretically, that could be a good because that means cheaper stuff coming into the United States. But there's also a problem in that they are emptying out our manufacturing sector.

Chapter 6: What is the significance of agricultural subsidies in the U.S.?

282.195 - 293.592 Ben Shapiro

And this leads to questions about the overall policy of the United States vis-a-vis China. What exactly are we trying to do vis-a-vis China? Now, I've made the case that if you wish to face down China, you have to do a few things.

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293.572 - 312.296 Ben Shapiro

One is you need closer relationships, not more attenuated relationships, closer trade and security relationships with other countries surrounding China, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. India, you need better relations with those countries so as to box in China and essentially isolate China.

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312.336 - 327.78 Ben Shapiro

If China wants to cheat, if they don't want to play by the rules, if China wishes to beggar its neighbor, let them pursue an autarkic economic policy. The thing about autarky is that it tends to make the country pursuing it poorer over time. Initially, it looks like an explosion of economic activity.

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But over time, as countries start pouring resources into less efficient modes of manufacture in order to do it at home, rather than to import those products from abroad, they tend to empty themselves out. And this is the common pattern in economics. Every mercantilist or fascistic economic system that has worked like this shows very good early growth numbers.

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348.776 - 367.74 Ben Shapiro

And then that growth curve eventually peters out and the country ends up with economic stagnation. This happened in Japan. It happened in South Korea. If you go back prior to World War II, this happened in Germany. One of the reasons that Germany under the Nazis had to become an expansionist power is because Germany tried to pursue economic autarky in the 1930s.

367.72 - 388.075 Ben Shapiro

And they saw, for a brief moment in time, a gigantic manufacturing boom, people getting off of the unemployment lines, moving out of the Weimar Republic era. But as it turns out, they were doing that, again, based on state expenditures that actually made them less economically viable over the long term. And so then they had to turn to actual physical territorial expansionism.

Chapter 7: How is the U.S. addressing its trade deficits with China?

388.983 - 396.353 Ben Shapiro

Autarky very often turns into a necessity for expanding your access to resources, which leads actually to invasions of other countries.

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396.373 - 411.472 Ben Shapiro

It is not a coincidence that countries that tend to embrace a very mercantilistic policy, an economic policy that focuses on let's build everything right here at home, when they can't, they then have to expand their own territorial borders or the places under their immediate dominion.

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412.473 - 430.951 Ben Shapiro

Free trade generally means that you don't have to invade other places because you can trade with those other places. Already coming up, how do we stop China? They have a strategy. Do we? First, for the past three weeks, you've heard me talk about our sponsor, Pure Talk's Unlimited for Life promotion. Let me tell you, this promotion was so successful, they're willing to extend it one final week.

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430.971 - 453.103 Ben Shapiro

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453.183 - 472.263 Ben Shapiro

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472.523 - 477.396 Ben Shapiro

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Chapter 8: What are the potential consequences of U.S. policies on global trade?

477.416 - 494.764 Ben Shapiro

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Head on over to lumen.me slash Shapiro to get an additional 15% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E slash Shapiro for 15% off on top of any offers or sales running on their website. So when you look at China, how would you stop China? Well, you need to do a few things, as we say. One, build up better security and economic relationships in the Far East.

577.075 - 587.026 Ben Shapiro

Also, build up better security and economic relationships, yes, with Europe. And that means that we can use tariffs as a way to force the Europeans to get rid of their non-tariff barriers.

587.506 - 607.351 Ben Shapiro

One of the ways I would be forcing the Europeans to pay their fair share is by using things like tariffs in order to push the Europeans to pay their fair share when it comes to, for example, the price of pharmaceuticals. Europe pays far less than what the actual market rate should be for pharmaceuticals. And then the United States ends up paying for that via our taxpayers and via our consumers.

608.152 - 627.278 Ben Shapiro

And that's just the way that it works. We should stop that, right? There are things that we can do to fight the non-tariff barriers and also the unfairness of our systems with Europe. But the thing we should be pursuing in the end is freer trade, better relationships. Because if you're going to box in China, you need to offer both carrot and stick. The stick to China, but carrots to our friends.

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