Clearly, the campaigns have decided this is an effective message here. It plays on Midwestern voters' anxieties about the loss of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing and foreign competition. But there's reason to believe that neither man is as tough as his talk when it comes to cracking down on China economically -- and for good reason. Aggressively protectionist policies might please some Rust Belt voters in theory, but most economists think a U.S.-China trade war would be a disaster for the world economy, and it wouldn't bring Ohio's jobs back. The campaign rhetoric on China appears to be just that -- the most craven sort of pandering, with little merit and less credibility.
Here's how the political fight over China breaks down.
What are they arguing about? The candidates' arguments are interchangeable and boil down to a simple claim: I'm tough on China, and my opponent is soft on China.
Obama points to the trade cases he's brought at the WTO as evidence his administration is not putting up with China's shenanigans. Meanwhile, he attacks Romney for the fact that Bain Capital invested in companies that shipped jobs overseas -- frequently referring to Romney as an "outsourcing pioneer," a claim that is thinly founded at best -- and the investments in China that showed up in Romney's recently released tax return. "Even today, part of Romney's fortune is invested in China," the Obama attack ad says.
Romney says he would take immediate action against China by formally labeling it a currency manipulator, and points to Obama's failure to do so as a major failing. "Seven times Obama could have taken action. Seven times he said no," Romney's ad says, referring to a Treasury Department report that is issued semiannually. Romney also counters Obama's outsourcing attack by pointing to federal money that has gone to foreign-based projects, calling Obama the "outsourcer-in-chief."
Why are they hammering this so hard? It works. Ohio is dotted with shuttered factories, testament to a bygone era in the American economy; meanwhile, new factories seem to spring up hourly across the Chinese landscape. They're not unrelated developments, as labor is cheaper in China and more expensive in the U.S., but it's also the case that voters need a scapegoat for their economic ills. China's currency manipulation and the resulting massive trade imbalance are real problems, though the trade deficit has eased somewhat recently. At Romney's rally in Dayton, I spoke to several Republican voters who blamed Obama for American jobs going to China.
"It's very popular to beat up on China -- it's something that very much crosses party lines," says David B. Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron. "Union folks have always felt that China was engaging in unfair practices and therefore we couldn't compete, and the Republican owners of those companies also believed something similar." One political science study found voter angst over outsourcing can be potent enough to swing an election.