In response to Lithuania’s effrontery in contradicting the People’s Republic of China by letting the Republic of China open a “representative office” in the capital city of Vilnius, the PRC not only is banning import into the PRC of Lithuanian products, it’s banning import of all products that contain Lithuanian components. As The Wall Street Journal dryly put it,

The effects are rippling across Europe.

And already Germany is intimating its desire for surrender, which should come as no surprise from a nation already openly obsequious before Russia:

The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has warned Vilnius that German subsidiaries are at risk.

The widening gyre may well spread across the pond.

In the US, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would bar goods made with forced labor in Xinjiang region from entering America, passed the House last month. If it becomes law, US companies should brace themselves.

It’s an open question whether the Progressive-Democrat running the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), and the President, Biden-Harris, will permit the bill to become law, or whether one of the other will join Germany as hostage and bar the law.

Elisabeth Braw concluded this in her op-ed at the link:

China’s punishment of Lithuania is a wake-up call for companies and countries alike.

Indeed.

It’s time for Europe and the US to stop doing business with the PRC altogether.

The transition will be deucedly expensive, but Europe and the US will be orders of magnitude better off not being as dependent on the PRC as the PRC’s actions are demonstrating us both to be.

That cost, and the reduction in our economic and political freedom of action, which the PRC will continue to inflict will only get far worse, the longer we delay in carrying out that transition.

In the meantime, it would do us and Lithuania, and all other nations wishing to reduce their dependency on the PRC, a world of good for us to increase our trade with Lithuania.