Imagine your favorite pizza place announces free pizza for everyone, every day. At first, it sounds like the perfect deal. Who doesn’t want free pizza? But over time, the local farmers who grew the tomatoes and wheat went out of business. The neighborhood baker shuts down. And that pizza place? It’s quietly being run by a powerful competitor from across the globe who’s buying up property on your street.
That’s free trade with China, in a slice.
In We Are Funding China’s Growth: That Must Stop!, author Edouard Prisse tears into the popular economic belief that “free trade is always good.” He calls it one of the great modern illusions—seductive on the surface, but catastrophic underneath.
In 2001, the U.S. pushed to bring China into the World Trade Organization under the belief that open markets would democratize China and benefit everyone. President Clinton even claimed the U.S. wouldn’t have to give up anything in return. “All we do is to agree to maintain the present access which China enjoys,” he said.
But as Prisse makes clear, this “free pizza” thinking skipped the ingredients list.
China entered the global trade system with two powerful advantages: a giant pool of low-wage labor and a Communist regime that could control production, suppress wages, and sidestep the rules of market capitalism. The result? A flood of cheap goods into Western markets, and a trade imbalance that now sends hundreds of billions of dollars into China every year.
Prisse points out that this imbalance isn’t theoretical. It’s quantifiable—and dangerous. China’s foreign exchange reserves now top $3 trillion. That’s real money, earned from exporting goods to the West, and it allows Beijing to:
- Bail out its inefficient state-run economy.
- Fund massive global infrastructure projects (like ports in Sri Lanka or railways in Africa).
- Influence political decisions in the EU through economic leverage.
Meanwhile, Western manufacturing has suffered. Jobs have moved abroad. Industries have relocated. In 2024, BASF—Germany’s chemical giant—moved a large portion of its production to China just to survive.
So why do we still cling to the fantasy of free trade like it’s a buffet line?
Prisse argues that the original decision to enter into free trade with China was based on false assumptions—and that correcting it now requires more than tariffs or vague “decoupling” talk. The answer is Equal Trade: a system where, in dollar terms, imports from China match exports to China.
That’s not protectionism. That’s balance.
Free pizza might sound great—but if it’s undermining your economy, hollowing out your community, and empowering an authoritarian regime, maybe it’s time to rethink the menu.
Because at some point, you realize: the pizza wasn’t really free.