Opinion: It's Time to Decouple from China—Completely

Before reality TV really took off, American movie-goers got a glimpse of what life inside a TV program might look like. "The Truman Show," starring Jim Carrey, centered on a man living inside an artificially constructed reality. Nothing about his world was authentic: His family and friends were actors. He was essentially confined to his small "town" on a soundstage. His attempts to understand what was happening were thwarted at every turn. This is sort of the way that Communist China is treating Americans these days. Beijing's leaders have us trapped in a false reality.

Those of us old enough to remember the Clinton Administration may recall that Americans were told that if we engaged in open trade with China, it would evolve to become more democratic. The planet's final bastion of Communism would fall, washed away by a wave of trade.

Instead, it is America's democracy and economy that is in peril. Millions of Americans have lost their good-paying manufacturing jobs to Chinese slave labor. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed by opioid addiction, and the deadliest opioids come from China. Per the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, "China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States."

Read more