> It wants to build a Chinese-led system on the ruins of the old liberal trading order, one which will rival Mr Trump’s empire of tariffs. Already China has shifted the geography of its trade: in the year to September its goods exports grew by over 8%, even as those to America fell by 27%.
I keep on wondering what the potential positive result is here for the US. Certainly doesn't seem to be a single one, though there are plenty of people very happy to soldier on as if there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
I fear the true reason this is happening is that autarchy makes for very strong dictators, even as it makes the population very poor. An obvious reason, but such a sad one.
My knee-jerk response is that they (China) can “make stuff” and we (USA) cannot. And thinking about it a little more, not sure this is all that far from the mark.
Hypothetically speaking, if the average Chinese person was as wealthy as the average American, how would that affect the world economy and geopolitics? What is America so afraid of?
West moved to service-based economies whilst east built their heavy industries and mining. As services can be always built, the west doomed itself the day it started shipping manufacturing to the east and thinking it can just do the high paying easy jobs from thereon. This is simply the effect of doing globalism the wrong way.
The best part? There is no fixing this. The west cannot afford to start industrialising because it lacks skilled manual labour, it put too many legal obstacles regarding ecology, the costs are astronomical which makes it unviable form day one, and most importantly - it lacks cheap energy which is absolutely crucial to have a blossoming heavy industries.
In short, the west is f'd. Especially Europe as the continent has depleted its natural resources over the millennia.
This was true in the 90s if you were lucky enough to immigrate to China and work there for a bit. You would have seen it unfolding and the West would have been none the wiser, as they were fed with an outdated, short lived period of China which painted it in a slow moving, old fashioned light.
This didn’t happen yesterday and it’s not because of Trump. This started decades ago and unfortunately people who raised concerns were laughed out of the room.
The fundamental thing the Economist and so on are in denial about is Trump is doing what he's doing because China have been comprehensively winning every trade engagement for decades, largely because western governments have underestimated them at every turn. There is a certain large VC firm bankrolling many on here that behind closed doors has been saying for a long time that they just look at China for ideas for what to fund in the west, and the closely held honest appraisals of companies like Huawei make embarrassing reading for their supposed western superiors.
What Trump is doing may be too little too late but failure to assert anything would just be continuing to boil the frog. Given how pathetic the western elites are when their comeuppance arrives it will certainly be deserved.
It's not a China's win, it's America's loss. Moreover, America is losing it on purpose, so that its rich will get richer and its poor will get poorer (relatively, of course).
> The final reason why China is winning is that the trade war has made Mr Xi and the Communist Party stronger, not weaker.
I am not so sure of this. The CCP just had to go through a massive purge [0] on the top, right before elections. This is not an indicator of "stronger" position of a despot.
To all those saying “China can make stuff and the US cannot”: it seems like the “robots” are really coming to both economies in the next decade, and they’re going to put more Chinese human labor out of work than US labor due to the sheer scale of China’s labor force.
With hundreds of millions of dudes out of work, I don’t think “good” things are going to happen with regards to East-Asian political stability.
I'm not sure anyone is a winner from that sort of trade war. It's more that the US is able to shoot itself in the foot while causing modest damage to China.
Sort of like the wonders of Brexit that the UK is still dealing with.
One reason I agree with the article is that the more you have, the more you fear to lose. The US is currently still a much more developed country, but this makes it more fragile, as people are more afraid to lose what they have. This was IMHO the exact reaction that led to Trump's election.
Another reason is, Trump went to war with the whole world. This works for now as other countries still obey the wishes of the most powerful country, but I have no doubts new alliances are being forged. At the end of the day, people will do what's in their interest, and if they can get a a better deal, they will ditch alliances with the US.
And all that before you remember there's a war on the US educational system going on as well.
The main difference here is that Trump is satisfied with the narrative/appearance of winning, and not really winning. There is no 4D chess on his side other than appear tough and a winner.
China is in it for the long run, they have a strategy and the poorly thought and planned actions of Trump have opened the world to China, so these 3 next years might be the definitive moment when China becomes the de-facto leader of the world.
I imagine that the nail in the coffin would be China managing to get the Yuan as the international currency to trade with its partners.
Make business with dictatorships and that is what you get. Globalization should have only happened between democratic countries. Now all those rich dictatorships will use their leverage to blackmail naive democratic countries and in the worst cases destroy democracy.
At first we have to show those dictatorships a taste of their own medicine. We need to be unfair, don’t give them access to our markets, don’t let them buy our companies. Steal their intellectual property. And also introduce tariffs. That is what they do for ages and we just let that happen. Dictatorships never play by the rules so we also don’t have to.
24 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 39.7 ms ] threadI keep on wondering what the potential positive result is here for the US. Certainly doesn't seem to be a single one, though there are plenty of people very happy to soldier on as if there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
I fear the true reason this is happening is that autarchy makes for very strong dictators, even as it makes the population very poor. An obvious reason, but such a sad one.
1990s: Let's move all our industrial base to Mexico and China so we can make everything cheap, let the market forces do their thing!
2022-2025: China is winning the trade war and Trump/Biden are to blame, what a bunch of idiots.
People are getting what they voted for and they'll be very unhappy with the consequences.
The best part? There is no fixing this. The west cannot afford to start industrialising because it lacks skilled manual labour, it put too many legal obstacles regarding ecology, the costs are astronomical which makes it unviable form day one, and most importantly - it lacks cheap energy which is absolutely crucial to have a blossoming heavy industries.
In short, the west is f'd. Especially Europe as the continent has depleted its natural resources over the millennia.
This didn’t happen yesterday and it’s not because of Trump. This started decades ago and unfortunately people who raised concerns were laughed out of the room.
What Trump is doing may be too little too late but failure to assert anything would just be continuing to boil the frog. Given how pathetic the western elites are when their comeuppance arrives it will certainly be deserved.
I am not so sure of this. The CCP just had to go through a massive purge [0] on the top, right before elections. This is not an indicator of "stronger" position of a despot.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/military-officials-expelled-china...
Overall, I prefer to read articles that are more factual versus this weasel-word salad.
With hundreds of millions of dudes out of work, I don’t think “good” things are going to happen with regards to East-Asian political stability.
Sort of like the wonders of Brexit that the UK is still dealing with.
Another reason is, Trump went to war with the whole world. This works for now as other countries still obey the wishes of the most powerful country, but I have no doubts new alliances are being forged. At the end of the day, people will do what's in their interest, and if they can get a a better deal, they will ditch alliances with the US.
And all that before you remember there's a war on the US educational system going on as well.
China is in it for the long run, they have a strategy and the poorly thought and planned actions of Trump have opened the world to China, so these 3 next years might be the definitive moment when China becomes the de-facto leader of the world.
I imagine that the nail in the coffin would be China managing to get the Yuan as the international currency to trade with its partners.
At first we have to show those dictatorships a taste of their own medicine. We need to be unfair, don’t give them access to our markets, don’t let them buy our companies. Steal their intellectual property. And also introduce tariffs. That is what they do for ages and we just let that happen. Dictatorships never play by the rules so we also don’t have to.