Sinofsky: Clinton's push for China WTO accession split both US parties
Steven Sinofsky · Former Microsoft Executive on Apple’s Hidden China Problem · Jun 18, 2025 · at 19:27
Steven Sinofsky, former Microsoft Windows president and a16z board partner, discusses how US political alignment on China trade policy in the late 1990s differed drastically from today.
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“The Clinton administration had really pushed for China to come in, and it actually split the Democratic Party. People today, their heads would explode if you tried this out, and it turns out the Republicans were split too. Yeah. Because half the Republicans were like, free trade, and the other half were like, we hate communism, and so the whole world, if you look back in 1998, it look, it's like completely upside down.”
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