What should Washington's relationship with the developing World be?

[Dayuhan]

Africa/China trade was $10.6 billion in 2000. It is now $210 billion. If the US doesn't have a response to that, then it should consign itself to future irrelevance in Africa. It is that simple.

$210 billion sounds like a lot until you realize that total US foreign trade in 2013 was over $5 trillion; China was over $4 trillion. African trade is a drop in the bucket.

Look at the actual composition of African trade with China, and you see that it's already largely irrelevant to the US. US imports of African oil are down 90% since 2010, and now run under 200,000bpd, a pittance. The Chinese economy relies heavily on primary industry and imports large quantities of base metals and other primary materials. The US uses much less and most of what it needs is available in the Western Hemisphere. Why would you ship bulk materials like iron, copper, manganese, chromite etc from Africa when they are available much closer to home?

Look at what China exports to Africa... is it really realistic for the US to even try to compete? Textiles? The US hasn't manufactured them for generations, we get them from China. The African market consumes a lot of machinery, equipment, and manufactured goods, but the market is cost sensitive and on a pure cost basis there's very limited space for US competition. As economies develop and buyers become more sophisticated it's likely that US and European brands will become more popular, but that's a fair ways off.

How much Chinese industrial development in China is funded by government loans? US companies can't compete on those grounds; the government financing just isn't there.

Add in impediments like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is a serious issue for US companies considering entry in the African market, and you pretty quickly reach the conclusion that the best move the US can make is to sit back and let the Chinese do as they will. If individual companies want to go in, fine, but on a policy basis I see no point at all in the US trying to compete with China in the African market.

And I don't have a problem with that, but the US still wants to feel important in Africa - without having a clear 10, 20, 30 year vision of what they want to accomplish here - but the Chinese do.

I actually think the US, for the most part, doesn't give a damn. There are sporadic efforts to put on a show of concern, but as an overall policy priority it's very low on the list.