Would Romney's Tough China Talk Survive Election?

A worker stands in front of containers at the Yangshan deep-water port in 2005 in Shanghai. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has promised to take a hard line against China's trade policies. But he is not the first politician to find in China a convenient campaign foil.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: There's another Republican presidential debate tonight on foreign policy and candidates are likely to take a hard line on China, always a helpful campaign issue. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Within the Republican field, no one's talked tougher about China than Mitt Romney. He's vowed to go after that country from his first day in office, threatening to slap tariffs on Chinese imports to make up for its artificially low currency.

MITT ROMNEY: We can't just sit back and let China run all over us. People say, well, you'll start a trade war. There's one going on right now, folks. They're stealing our jobs. And we're going to stand up to China.

HORSLEY: In the Republicans' last foreign policy debate 10 days ago, Romney argued the U.S. still has plenty of leverage over China that it could use to demand more favorable trading terms.

ROMNEY: We have right now something they need very badly, which is access to our market, and our friends around the world have that same power over China.

HORSLEY: For longtime observers of U.S.-China relations, Romney's campaign rhetoric has a familiar ring.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: China needs our market. Their economy is dependent on exports to the United States.

HORSLEY: This is candidate Barack Obama in the spring of 2008.

OBAMA: What we need to do is to just be better bargainers and say, look, here's the bottom line: You guys keep on manipulating your currency, we are going to start shutting off access to some of our markets.

HORSLEY: But President Obama never made good on that threat. Scott Paul, who keeps a wary eye on China as head of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, says Bill Clinton was also tougher on China on the campaign trail than he was in the White House. Paul doubts a President Romney would be any different.

SCOTT PAUL: We've seen presidential candidates in the past talk about China in a very aggressive way, only to back off once they become president. And so I think that there is still a gap between rhetoric and performance.

HORSLEY: While U.S. officials continue to complain about China's undervalued currency - and the disadvantage it creates for American manufacturers - the Obama administration has stopped short of denying China access to U.S. markets. Instead, the administration's pursued more targeted actions. In 2009, for example, it attached a 35 percent tariff to Chinese tires. Paul, whose alliance represents steel workers and domestic manufacturers, says that provided American tire makers with some much-needed breathing room.

PAUL: The tire case meant jobs for American workers. Since the tire decision, we have seen several companies hire back workers, invest in new factories. We've seen these tire makers gain market share.

HORSLEY: But Romney opposed the administration's tariff measure. In his 2010 book "No Apology," Romney called it protectionism.

ROMNEY: President Obama's action to defend American tire companies from foreign competition may make good politics by repaying unions for their support of his campaign, but it is decidedly bad for the nation and our workers. Protectionism stifles productivity.

HORSLEY: Romney appears to draw a distinction in his book between actions to protect a specific industry, such as tires, and those that target economy-wide threats - like an undervalued currency. Some observers say the currency issue is overblown. Nick Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics says China's currency has been rising, albeit slowly, so the artificial advantage that Chinese exporters enjoy is the smallest it's been in several years.

NICK LARDY: The government would never admit that it was responding to pressure. There's certainly a very, very strong case to be made that it is in China's own interest to allow their currency to appreciate.

HORSLEY: Lardy says he'd like to see the government pursue more trade complaints against China. But he recognizes trade is just one element in a complex relationship. China is the world's second-biggest economy, with growing strategic influence. So Lardy says this year's confrontational campaign rhetoric may give way, just as it has in the past.

LARDY: Everybody recognizes that in campaigns candidates say things that they think might gain votes. And when they get into office and see the complexity and the challenges that they face, they find that they're a bit more constrained.

HORSLEY: Officials in China know that too. So, like American voters, they're listening to what the presidential candidates have to say, and taking their words with a grain of salt. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

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