In recent years, I've frequently heard the argument that the Clinton administration made a mistake by allowing China to join the WTO. The specific actions here are the Clinton administration's completion of a bilateral deal with China in 1999 (which paved the way for other governments to sign their own bilateral deals with China) and the U.S. legislation in 2000 to grant permanent normal trade relations to China. This all led to China's WTO accession in December 2001.
As to whether this was a policy mistake, I think much of the surge in imports from China in the 2000s was coming regardless of WTO accession, as China continued to develop; and the reduction of China's tariffs and other protectionist barriers as part of its WTO accession was extremely valuable to U.S. producers and service suppliers. But let's put that aside, because I want to raise a practical point about the timetable of China's WTO accession, by thinking about the counterfactual in which the Clinton administration didn't reach a deal with China and China's accession was still up in the air at the end of Clinton's term in office.
How would this counterfactual have played out? A key factor here is an unrelated foreign policy event that took place around this time: the 9/11 terrorist attacks. After 9/11, the Bush administration focused its foreign policy attention on the Middle East, and often needed to get China's support (or non-objection) for its actions there related to the Iraq invasion and the war on terror.
As to its trade policy, the Bush administration was looking for trade liberalizing opportunities, including through the launch of the Doha Round and its "competitive liberalization" initiative that involved bilateral FTAs; and towards the end of Bush's second term, the administration launched negotiations to join the agreement that would become the TPP.
With all that in mind, what I wonder is this: If China were not already in the WTO by 2001, wouldn't the Bush administration have been very supportive of China's WTO accession in the post-9/11 period? And therefore, regardless of the Clinton administration's position and actions on the issue, isn't it likely that China would be in the WTO now, either on its current terms or on some other terms?
To be clear, I'm not suggesting there are any policy or political implications from any of this. This is not an argument in defense of the Clinton administration's approach (although as I hinted at above, I do think they made the correct decision). It's just something that occurred to me and I thought it was interesting, and was curious to see if others had thoughts.
ADDED:
To add support to my argument, as Ben Heath pointed out to me, during the 2000 presidential campaign Bush supported the Clinton administration's China trade efforts:
''This is not a Republican or Democratic concern,'' Mr. Bush said. ''It is an American concern. This trade agreement is the work of 13 years and three administrations. We cannot let that work be undone.'"
