The US government is using national security arguments to justify protectionism against Chinese investors.

At the state level, Governor of Michigan Rick Snyder has invested energy, attention, and travel time into cultivating lasting and productive relationships with Chinese government and business leaders. His efforts have produced extensive economic benefits for his state and region; providing a blue print for the combative President Trump on how American leaders can turn a positive relationship with China into big wins at home. 

Wang Jianlin’s plan to purchase Dick Clark Productions for one billion dollars was blocked by currency controls. The well-documented difficulty of moving dollars out of China in the past year reflects policy designed to slow the rampant purchase of real estate abroad. It is one thing to stem the trend of affluent individuals gobbling up houses in Vancouver and Los Angeles, but quite another to block a company as powerful as Wanda Dalian from moving its cash around.

While the U.S. remains the largest recipient of foreign investment, investors today have many options regarding where to invest, and other countries look increasingly more stable and better managed in comparison to President Trump’s deteriorating “rule of law.” Thus, Chinese investors who have long seen the U.S. as a stable growth market may well reconsider.

Governments at the national, state, and local levels have an important role to play in building economic bridges with China. In an era where the Chinese continue to seek places throughout the world to invest their new wealth, Michigan should be attempting to make America an economic magnet for such investment and job growth for the American worker.

All the efforts Chicago has made to woo Chinese corporations, along with the resulting economic, cultural, and academic benefits both sides have enjoyed, might be curbed by growing inward-looking policies.

It is no secret that America’s infrastructure has been crumbling for years. Even the $305 billion highway bill that was signed in last December by Congress is only a drop in the water. However, the solutions to improving our infrastructure present an unforeseen opportunity to bring together the two largest economies in the world.

Chinese mining companies in Ecuador and Peru recognize the social, environmental, and political issues which occur with significant development, and is giving back to the community by building bridges, roads, health clinics, sewers, and water systems.

Rising incomes, limited farmland, and polluted water and soil has prompted China to look overseas for agriculture imports. Over the last decade, the United States has been China’s top agricultural partner and this relationship looks likely to continue and indeed strengthen.

A close bilateral relationship is always accompanied by more differences, frictions or even conflicts, including profound structural contradictions. So long as both regard and handle their relations from a strategic and long-term perspective, there will be no difficulty that China and the US cannot overcome.