The Ezra Klein Show 

My colleague Tom Friedman thinks we’re screwed.

That’s the first thing he told me when recounting his recent trip to China. It’s not just because of the trade war that President Trump is escalating right now. Friedman believes the whole Washington consensus on China — that the country is a hostile adversary — is dangerous and based on an outdated understanding of what China now is. He saw how China’s manufacturing and technology have advanced so far that in many ways it now surpasses the United States’.

In this conversation, Friedman walks me through the advancements he saw in some of the most critical fields of the coming decades — including A.I., E.V.s and clean energy. We discuss why he sees the current consensus as dangerous, what a different path might look like and what the United States should do to develop its domestic manufacturing so that we don’t “get steamrolled.”

0:00 Intro
1:36 Why Americans misunderstand China
10:30 China's technological advancements
15:23 Washington consensus on China
30:15 Trump's tariffs
51:42 Democrats on China
56:17 America's cultural revolution?
1:02:11 Impressions of China
1:04:55 Book recommendations