A lot of talk about the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a bit removed from the real world. But the big question is very real world: Does trade and investment with the PRC take jobs away from Americans? The answer is no, mostly. The Chinese government and Chinese enterprises do some things that cost American jobs. We need to deal with these things. But the idea that China is stealing millions of our jobs is wrong.

An eye-catching figure is the huge trade deficit we run with China, close to $300 billion last year. Unemployment goes up and down, the value of the currency goes up and down, but the trade deficit just seems to go up. In the past 25 years, the trade deficit has fallen only twice. The two years that it fell were 2001 (slightly) and 2009 (sharply).

Those were recession years, with 2009 being much more painful. The trade deficit is about the strength of our economy; when it's strong, our trade deficit with the PRC rises. Protectionists call 2009 a great year because the trade deficit plunged-but no one else does.

We should also remember that we don't track our trade deficit very accurately. For example, the way we count it, an iPad assembled in China and sold in the U.S. makes our trade deficit bigger even if some of the parts for the iPad originally came from the U.S.But suppose you're worried about the trade deficit. In theory, the government could do a couple of things about it. We could put tariffs on Chinese goods. But tariffs are just a fancy name for sales taxes on things Americans want to buy. Why is raising taxes on Americans a good idea? Or we could allow only a certain amount of Chinese goods into the U.S. But that would be our government telling ordinary Americans that they're not allowed to buy what they want. That would make us poorer and less free to spend our own money as we see fit.

Worse, very little of what we get from China can be called luxuries. Clothes, furniture, TVs, cell phones-making these more expensive or harder to find will hurt working Americans most.

A more popular idea is to subsidize our exports. Subsidies pick winners and losers, pure and simple. And the money for subsidies doesn't come from thin air. The government takes that money from other companies and the American people. Why should our government decide that everyone else should pay to make one company's exports cheaper?