Sherrod Brown Seeing ‘Reds’ Over China Trade

Sherrod Brown Seeing ‘Reds’ Over China Trade

Sherrod Brown Seeing ‘Reds’ Over China Trade

A liberal Ohio senator uses an unfortunate baseball analogy.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is seeing Reds.

Calling on his Senate colleagues to hurry up and vote on House-passed legislation that would sanction China over alleged currency abuses, Brown makes this unfortunate analogy that, I suppose, he thought was funny: 

Our exports to China have increased. But reporting only exports is like reporting just one team’s score in baseball: the Cubs scoring five runs sounds good, until you hear that the Reds tallied 12.

Excuse me? The Reds? Now, I realize that "Reds" is the name of the beloved Cincinnati ballclub in Brown’s home state. I also know that back in the bad old days of the cold war, the Reds changed their name to the "Redlegs" to appease anticommunists. (When passions eased, they started calling themselves the Reds again, and by then the focus of fanaticism had changed. The celebrated Tampa Bay Devil Rays changed their name to the simpler “Rays,” apparently to assuage Christian conservative who through that maybe the team’s owners were counting on Satan to add a few miles per hour to Devil Rays’ fastballs.)

Those who’ve read my recent piece in The Nation, "China in the Driver’s Seat," know that I don’t think that sanctioning China is a productive idea, and neither do folks such as Robert Reich. It’s crass electoral politics, and that’s bad enough. But adding “Reds” into the mix makes it worse.

Be part of 160 years of confronting power 


Every day,
The Nation exposes the administration’s unchecked and reckless abuses of power through clear-eyed, uncompromising independent journalism—the kind of journalism that holds the powerful to account and helps build alternatives to the world we live in now. 

We have just the right people to confront this moment. Speaking on Democracy Now!, Nation DC Bureau chief Chris Lehmann translated the complex terms of the budget bill into the plain truth, describing it as “the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history.” In the pages of the June print issue and on The Nation Podcast, Jacob Silverman dove deep into how crypto has captured American campaign finance, revealing that it was the top donor in the 2024 elections as an industry and won nearly every race it supported.

This is all in addition to The Nation’s exceptional coverage of matters of war and peace, the courts, reproductive justice, climate, immigration, healthcare, and much more.

Our 160-year history of sounding the alarm on presidential overreach and the persecution of dissent has prepared us for this moment. 2025 marks a new chapter in this history, and we need you to be part of it.

We’re aiming to raise $20,000 during our June Fundraising Campaign to fund our change-making reporting and analysis. Stand for bold, independent journalism and donate to support The Nation today.

Onward, 

Katrina vanden Heuvel 
Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x