In We Are Funding China’s Growth, Edouard Prisse delivers a call to action: it’s not enough to criticize China’s growing power—the United States must radically restructure how it trades with Beijing. The answer is not decoupling or half-measures like some tariffs, but a decisive pivot from free trade to equal trade, well organized, carefully prepared.
The concept of equal trade, as proposed by Prisse, is straightforward but revolutionary: the U.S. should only import from China goods that equal in value with the amount the U.S. exports to China. Trade volume can be large, but the flow of money must be balanced. This approach is designed to stop the annual hemorrhaging of over $600 billion from the American economy into China—a sum that fuels Beijing’s authoritarian ambitions.
Prisse lays out a pragmatic and actionable plan. It begins with a formal acknowledgment by the President that the 2001 decision to enter into free trade with China was an error and was based on false assumptions—namely, that free trade would benefit the US economically. Then, POTUS would notify the WTO that the United States is revoking its commitment to unrestricted trade with China.
From there, a six-month transition period would begin. During this time, a newly created U.S. Import-Export Trade Bureau would define and enforce new rules: certain industries—especially those critical to national security, such as defense, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals—would be forbidden from sourcing any materials from China. Others, such as low-risk consumer goods, might still be permitted, but under strict quotas to maintain trade balance.
A central element of this transition is not to isolate the U.S. economy, but to redirect production to either domestic facilities or to other democratically aligned low-cost nations like Vietnam or India. While this would require short-term investment and adjustment, it would end America’s economic dependency on the Chinese strategic adversary.
Prisse stresses that this policy must be backed by the political will to resist corporate lobbying. Many large American firms profit enormously from the current imbalance and will inevitably lobby against any change. But as Prisse argues, their short-term interests are at odds with national security and our long-term economic sovereignty.
The blueprint isn’t just theoretical—it’s a call for systemic change. It includes planning for the relocation of industrial capacity, transparency in public communication, and a reset of the American economic mindset: that free trade is not inherently good if it undermines national interests.
Prisse anticipates objections. Detractors argue it’s “too late” to change course. But as he notes, the idea that China’s dominance is inevitable is not just defeatist. It is incorrect. By cutting off the annual financial enrichment of Beijing, the U.S. would expose the underlying fragility of the Chinese economy—an economy burdened by non-productive investments, bloated state-owned enterprises, and helped by cruelly keeping workers’ salaries at bottom level.
This is not an anti-China position; it’s a pro-America strategy grounded in realism. If the U.S. fails to act, Prisse warns, it will continue funding its own geopolitical eclipse.
The shift from free trade to equal trade is difficult—but is essential. It offers a roadmap for reclaiming control of American manufacturing, securing national interests, and halting China’s silent rise to global dominance. The time for action is now. POTUS Trump understands the problem, but his advisers on what to do in this matter, are incompetent.
President Trump is now doing it in another way. He does not give the process six months, he slams tariffs immediately. Prisse thinks this very rough method can be successful too, but it needs to be well explained to the business community. Right now it makes chaos and almost unsustainable uncertainty. It has recently resulted in China threatening to halt delivering rare earths, on which it has a de facto monopoly. And POTUS had to pipe down!