Commentary: As the U.S.-China Trade War Continues, Career Training Is America’s Best Defense

People working on desktop computers

Amid the ongoing trade war between China and the United States, lawmakers are moving to pass a comprehensive new bill to boost economic competition, minimize reliance on China, and promote investment in the American workforce. With our economy beginning to recover, we need to focus on preparing young people to fill vital roles in the years ahead and decrease our reliance on tech and talent from abroad. 

China has the world’s second-largest economy and a faster-growing and more lucrative tech industry that “is poised to come out ahead” of the U.S., according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal last year. It’s winning the 5G race, contributes more to AI research, and because its population is so large, it has more data to feed to machine-learning and transportation technologies like self-driving vehicles.

If the U.S. wants to prevail in the tech race, we have to start with education. The pandemic has provided motivation for the U.S. to seek greater economic independence and bring jobs back to our shores. Career-oriented learning solutions can help fill these specialized jobs.

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Commentary: President Trump’s Trade War With China Is a Moral and Economic Fight for the Future of the World

Ask yourself if you were President, what would you do if you discovered that a foreign country has been waging an underground war against the nation you are sworn to protect surreptitiously killing tens of thousands of your people every year by pouring a drug so deadly that merely accidentally touching a small amount could kill you?

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Analysis: China Is Not as Great a Threat on Rare Earths as They Say

by Robert Romano   “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” That was a People’s Daily commentary threatening that China will cut the U.S. off from rare earth minerals used to make high tech components for computers, smart phones and military weapons systems. The People’s Daily is an official newspaper for Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the largest newspaper group in the nation, and the threat comes as U.S. and Chinese trade officials attempt to find a way forward from their current impasse in negotiations. The commentary was headlined “United States, don’t underestimate China’s ability to strike back” and spoke of America’s “uncomfortable” reliance on rare earth minerals from China. That part is at least true. We do rely on rare earths from China (and elsewhere). The U.S. consumed about 9,500 metric tons of rare earths in 2018, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and we are 100 percent reliant on imports of rare earth metals. Most of it, 80 percent, does come from China. But left out of the analysis is that China has been losing global market share since its high-water mark of 95 percent of global production in 2010, down to 80 percent global market share now, mostly thanks to…

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