The world has a lot of recyclables, especially Americans. When I say a lot, I mean billions worth. According to Bloomberg, “by the mid-2000s, scrap paper was among the leading U.S. exports to China by volume.” China has been the largest importer of the world’s recycled goods for some time now as a result of the hunger it’s manufacturing boom caused. In order to feed the consumerist beast of The United States and others, China needs the scrap to keep up without breaking its bank. It is cheaper for China to import recycled scrap as opposed to making steel, paper, cardboard, etc. on their own so it seems like a win-win for the country. In July of 2017, China’s government announced it will stop eating up a majority of the world’s recyclables and will no longer be the world’s recycling bin. The government made this decision due to environmental concerns. Reuters reported that China told the World Trade Organization that in order “to protect China’s environmental interests and people’s health, we urgently adjust the imported solid wastes list, and forbid the import of solid wastes that are highly polluted.”

The environmental concerns are outweighing the trade benefits for China and they have for some time time now. In 2013, according to The Economist, the Chinese government launched Operation Green Fence to try and lessen the amount of foreign, low-quality waste from entering the country. This new announcement by the Chinese government is proposing to cut off a majority of recyclable imports for the sake of the environment. China is facing a $5 billion loss in trade with this proposal according to a report by The Economist. As of 2016, Reuters stated that China imported $3.7 billion worth of waste. This decision to choke scrap imports will rattle the global economy significantly.

Not only will China be heavily affected, but the United States will be too. Exporting waste takes work and work means more American jobs. Bloomberg reported that 40,000 Americans have jobs due to the exportation of recyclables. When China blocks the trading of trash, about 40,000 Americans will be left without a job and the American landfills will fill back up. The cost is significant as well. There could be a trickle-down effect here into individual American homes as well. If it begins to cost too much for smaller recycling companies, or even some larger ones to pay for more workers or equipment, this could mean the separation of waste could fall directly on the individual. The loss of this huge benefit to the trade deficit between China and the United States will leave many cargo ships empty of exports to take back to China.

With that being said, the recycling market will remain afloat, but domestically and at a smaller scale. According to Dylan de Thomas, vice president of industry collaboration for the Recycling Partnership, “the really large waste and recycling companies have a vested interest in the recycled fiber and plastic markets.” Not only large companies, but the general public in the United States has a vested interest in recycling as well. Due to America’s own concern for the environment, we may only see a small effect on the American economy as whole, but only time will tell if the United States can pick up where China left off or have to figure out a new strategy.

Heralded as a powerhouse to propel the world into the future, China has long been regarded as having one of the most sound demographics to power its economy. Recently, the country has announced that it is lifting the controversial one-child policy, which has been in place since 1979 as a means to control the population at a time when China was still poor and undeveloped. However, remnant effects are being felt by the country in 21st century, in the form of a destabilized demographic.

What would happen when your family is told that you are only allowed one child, and in some cases at most one son after having a daughter, in a country where sons are traditionally viewed as being more virtuous than daughters?

(An old propaganda poster supporting One-Child Policy: “Executing the One-Child Policy Is A Part of the Country’s Foundamental Principles.”)

Some simple math will tell us that male babies born will outnumber the female ones, and this is exactly the problem Chinese Millennials and Gen Zs face as they approach adulthood. In his article, BC Cook outlined the threats he thinks the Chinese society faces as a result of the One-Child Policy. The most pronounced issue, he argues, is the problem of “online brides”, or brides from neighboring Asian countries who come over to be married to Chinese single men who cannot find a wife.

Now, online dating is not illegal, not even in China. “However,” Cook argues, “Chinese men finding foreign brides and starting families is exactly what the Chinese government was trying to avoid. So the one-child, male-only mandate from the government has backfired.”

On one hand, there is a markedly obvious imbalance in the “supply and demand” of domestic brides, as a direct result of the One-Child Policy. On the other, the Chinese philosopher Mengzi summarized in a proverb: “Dishonor to the family has three forms, and having no child is of the worst.”（不孝有三，无后为大）The Chinese traditional culture heavily focuses on the idea of continuing one’s lineage by starting one’s own family. To this day, this idea still permeates all levels of Chinese society. Where demand exists supply must be sought, and in this case, in the form of online brides from Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc.

(“It sure would be nice to have a sibling, Mr. Xi!”)

Disregarding the ethical arguments, this aspect of the One-Child Policy’s remnant effects certainly has created social-political implications where the imbalance of a very sensitive supply-and-demand relationship sought balance elsewhere. “There is a limit to how much we can legislate human behavior,” summarized Cook, articulating his belief that the Chinese government has disrupted an instinctive economy of basic human needs.

It is very unlikely that the Chinese government will step in to regulate the online dating industry as a result, because online dating has created an in-demand economy across China. Still, the influx of foreign brides, many of whom are still undocumented, has most definitely created implications for the government.

Not only does supply create its own demand. Demand creates supply where necessary, too.

I’ve trained myself to automatically assume that everything Donald Trump says is incorrect. It mitigates frustration and utter disbelief. It prioritizes my sanity. Most importantly, it causes me great surprise when he says something that is anything remotely near true. With Trump as our president, I keep Snopes bookmarked in my favorites bar.

One of Trump’s favorite hot topics is China. He called global warming a hoax created by China. He accused the U.S. of becoming at third-world country at the hands of China. He even tweeted that China did “NOTHING” to help the U.S. stop North Korea from creating nuclear weapons.

No matter how much I hate to admit it, though, President Trump’s take on trade with China does have an inkling of truth. In his 2017 Inaugural Address, he said:

“We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind.”

While this is an extreme exaggeration, we should be careful not to brush it off as quickly as we do his take on global warming.

China, by all means, is a global powerhouse. However, it wasn’t always that way. For years and years, communist China had a downward-spiriling economy. But between 1991 and 2013, China’s exports increased from 2% of the world’s total to almost 20% (Freakonomics). The country transformed into a leading producer as a result of its plentitude of resources available and more importantly, its cheap labor. China was able to do this so quickly because of its sheer size and the massive potential amount of slack it had to pick up.

In the 1990’s, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach exploded in use due to China’s manufacturing transformation. The two ports combined currently do the most trade in the U.S. (Port of LA Communications). Jobs in shipping–working at the port, sorting, on trains, etc–all either kept or exceeded their current demand. The one part of the labor market that fell apart was manufacturing.

Globalization, trade amongst foreign countries, raises the GDP of the countries at stake. This is not without adverse distributional consequences, though. And one of its biggest dilemmas is labor.

China’s rapid production development is one of the best things to have happened to the U.S. middle class. Chinese workers are employed and producing items to be exported to other countries. People in the U.S. are happy because everything they buy is so much cheaper, thanks to the low financial cost of labor in China and the super low cost of streamlined shipping thanks to the invention of TEUs (Gabriel Kahn). The net effect of the U.S.-China trade relationship is good.

The loser is the manufacturing labor market, a potential reason for why we are currently living in a country with Donald Trump serving as president. With China producing things at such low costs, the need for low-skilled or unskilled manufacturing jobs in the United Stated became virtually nonexistent. Manufacturing workers were laid off in the masses, and plants closed throughout America. From 2000-2007, one million U.S. manufacturing jobs disappeared, 40% of which was attributable to China’s newfound success (Autor). Highly-skilled U.S. workers were just fine, but those who were educated at that level lost their work to cheap Chinese labor.

Those low-skilled manufacturing workers were now out of work and needed to costlessly reallocate to their next best opportunity. This was not easy to do because for the most part because their adaptation skills were poor, making reallocations unsuccessful. This had adverse effects on other labor markets, which served the manufacturing plants that went out of business. The wages of manufacturing jobs that did still exist were lowered because of the low cost of Chinese labor. Public transfer benefits such as medicare, medicaid, food stamps, etc., became more widely used because low-skilled workers were out of work, and their skills levels made it hard for them to reallocate without any costs.

China’s transformation into a country of mass exports adversely created job loss, wage depression, and increase in welfare spending for a particular portion of the United States: manufacturing workers who aren’t highly skilled. The growth of China into a powerhouse nation was as a majority a global good. However, much to Trump’s and my dismay, it also fully disrupted a U.S. labor market–manufacturing–for the worse.