When policymakers today talk about trade, they often speak in abstract terms: efficiency, comparative advantage, global integration. But what happens when those principles are applied blindly, without a deep understanding of their consequences? In We Are Funding China’s Growth That Must Stop!, Edouard Prisse offers a sobering answer by revisiting the core lessons of John Maynard Keynes and applying them to today’s global imbalance—specifically, the West’s trade relationship with China.
Prisse isn’t the first to invoke Keynes, but he may be one of the few who applies his macroeconomic insights with clarity and urgency. At the heart of his argument is this: Keynes warned that trade imbalances could destabilize entire economies. Persistent surpluses or deficits are not self-correcting—they create political and economic distortions that undermine stability. Yet for over two decades, the United States has accepted a massive and growing trade deficit with China without meaningful challenge.
In 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, the dominant narrative was that free trade would bring prosperity to all and lead to political reform in China. Neither prediction came true. Instead, China used its access to Western markets to accumulate wealth on an unprecedented scale, all while strengthening authoritarian control. Western countries, meanwhile, saw manufacturing sectors erode, wages stagnate, and strategic industries fall behind.
Keynes would not have been surprised.
He understood that trade is not just about efficiency—it is about balance. When one nation continually runs a surplus, it gains not just capital, but leverage. When another runs a deficit, it loses not only money but sovereignty. Prisse extends this logic to the present, showing how the U.S. is funding the rise of its strategic rival simply by maintaining an outdated faith in “free” trade with an unfree partner.
The Chinese economy is not a free market. It is a hybrid model where state control, suppressed wages, and government subsidies distort production costs. Western businesses may enjoy lower prices for now, but at what cost? The long-term result is dependency on an economic adversary and the erosion of domestic industrial capacity.
What makes Prisse’s warning especially timely is the current complacency. Many economists and policymakers still cling to outdated models that assume all trade is beneficial. But they ignore the structural realities of modern geopolitics. China is not playing the same game. It’s using trade as a strategic tool, and by failing to respond in kind, the West is walking into a trap.
Keynes once wrote, “Ideas shape the course of history.” Prisse builds on that by arguing that wrong ideas—especially in economics—can destroy the very foundations of a society. By ignoring the fundamental insights of Keynesian thought, the West has allowed its trade deficit with China to become a weapon against itself.
The solution Prisse offers—Equal Trade—is deeply Keynesian in spirit. It restores balance, discipline, and sovereignty to the trade system. It recognizes that markets cannot correct everything on their own, especially when one side is governed by a command economy with geopolitical ambitions.
We Are Funding China’s Growth That Must Stop! is more than a policy critique. It is a call to return to economic wisdom rooted in reality, not ideology. Ignoring Keynes was a mistake. Continuing to do so may prove catastrophic.
The time has come to stop treating trade policy as a numbers game and start treating it as a question of national survival.