When ManufactureThis sat down last Friday to watch the first presidential debate, and was told by Jim Lehrer that the debate would be mostly about foreign policy but would also feature quite a bit of discussion about the economy. At that, my thought was, “Okay, great, foreign policy AND the economy. There’s no way they can get out of talking about China.” But, of course, they did. According to the transcript, Obama mentioned China three times, and McCain mentioned China twice. Both of them mentioned the fact that we have borrowed a lot of money from China, and beyond that Obama mentioned China in relationship to their recent space launch and in the context of potential Iran sanctions. McCain, other than his one reference to the debt issue, only mentioned China in a reference about…Richard Nixon! McCain apparently thinks the guy on the left is the more relevant to China than our trade deficit. I would imagine he thinks the guy on the right is really young and makes the devil's music. Neither candidate addressed the fact that the erosion of our domestic manufacturing base and the outsourcing of our critical infrastructure to China is, let’s not mince words, one of the major national security challenges the next president will face! The Vice Presidential candidates get their chance tonight in St. Louis, and ManufactureThis certainly hopes that these issues will be addressed. According to AAM’s data, Missouri has lost 70,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, and the trade deficit with China has cost Missouri 45,400 jobs. The candidates owe it not just to the people watching at home, but to the good people of St. Louis who will be in the hall tonight. ManufactureThis is, alas, not optimistic. Instead, the best he’s really hoping for is for Joe Biden to explain away his fairly poor fair trade voting record and for Sarah Palin to…er…I dunno, explain how Alaska is the closest state to China.**** Frankly, I’ll be winning to declare a winner to either candidate who works in a reference to St. Louis’s own Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Still, as cynical as ManufactureThis is, he is hoping to be wrong. So, get to it, Joe and Sarah. I'm listening. Show me. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Did you think it was called something else? ****And, in case you’re wondering, yes, ManufactureThis is just fastidious enough that he actually checked to make sure. According to this, Alaska is about a thousand miles closer to China than Hawaii.