The current U.S. administration sees China as the United States’s principal global rival, and it has effectively declared economic war on the country. Its justification for this is largely that China is (1) stealing American jobs and (2) pirating American intellectual property. Data collected by the Long US-China Institute suggest that China is far less guilty of these crimes than many policymakers and commentators would have us believe.
As the exhibit just below shows, consumer incomes in both countries have enjoyed continuous growth in purchasing power since 1985. Only two years of decline are discernable in the U.S. trendline: 2008 and 2009, coinciding with the 2008/9 recession.