ABSTRACT
The least traumatic course may be to allow the labor costs between the trading countries to balance. But those economies will not retain that balance; capital will move to still cheaper labor. Before China agreed to limit increases to 3 percent per year, its textile exports to the United States were climbing 19 percent a year. Its trade surplus with the United States climbed from $3 billion in 1989 to $33.8 billion in 1995 and to $60 billion in 1998. China has the resources, population, and internal cohesion to force honest trade upon the world by example if it so chooses. The developing-world countries can then trade with each other for the resources to keep their industries and their economies going and barter resources to the developed world in trade for the latest technology for those industries. Bartering avoids hard money monopolization and the resultant unequal trades between weak and strong nations.
