Most favored nation

Most favored nation (MFN) is a trade status given by one nation to another that is the most favored trade status. In other words, a nation with MFN status receives the best treatment possible in trade. An MFN receives the lowest or notariffs and is not disadvantaged in any way.

In the United States, MFN status is also called normal trade relations.

The members of the World Trade Organization, which include all developed nations, accord each other most favored nation status.

China

In the 1990s the issue of Most Favored Nation trade status for China was pushed by the CCP, globalists and agribusiness interests, but strongly opposed by religious and human rights groups. Bill Clinton's policy, which began with a 1993 executive order to make MFN status conditional on Chinese human rights and political reforms, changed as lobbyists pushed a trade relationship with the CCP and forced the issue to be separated from the CCP's human rights abuses.

As the Chinagate scandal progressed, Bill Clinton adjusted his China policy in 1996 and advocated dialogue and engagement; this led to a change in relations. But Washington continued to criticize China on the issues of Hong Kong, human rights, trade, arms sales, Taiwan, and questionable political donations to US election campaigns. Clinton welcomed General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Butcher of Tiannanen Square Jiang Zemin's to the White House. The major factors affecting the relationship include: the enduring impact of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre when the Communist Party crushed a peaceful democratic movement with the army; the negative coverage of the CCP's human rights abuses by American media, American psychological insecurity caused by the rise of Communist China, and US domestic politics grappling with a thirst for cheap Chinese manufactured goods while American factories shut down and jobs loss to China.

China's "economic miracle" since it was granted Most Favored Nation status by the U.S. Congress in 2002, and access to the U.S. consumer market, led to unprecedented economic growth and better living conditions for millions of Chinese. It also strengthened the grip of the anti-democratic Chinese Communist Party over people's everyday lives, and the loss of manufacturing jobs for consumer products in the United States.

As China grew in power, it also became increasingly aggressive on the international stage. The CCP increased control over the country and economy, and foreign companies worked to appease the Chinese government. China uses about half of the world's steel and cement/concrete. In the 3 years from 2011 to 2014, China used 6.6 gigatons of cement, which is more than the US did in the entire 20th century. China also worked to isolate Taiwan diplomatically. China became the dominant trading partner of a large majority of the world's countries, overtaking the U.S. Under Xi Jinping, China regressed back to Mao's totalitarianism.

By 2017, the imposition of tariffs by U.S. President Donald J. Trump began to redress the imbalance. China's economy was developed over those early decades of the 21st century as a coastal, manufacturing economy entirely dependent on exports. Young people left their home villages in the countryside to seek work in coastal factories. The prosperity was all built on access to the U.S. consumer market, and Americans' appetite for cheap manufactured goods. Scant attention was paid to developing a domestic service sector economy, while the vast interior remained impoverished, and increasingly so as young people abandoned rural agricultural work for urban factory work.

See also

• Foreign policy

Sources

• The Earth and Its Peoples A Global History, Bulliet et al., 2005.