Chinese Foreign Ministry officials issued a statement on Friday dismissing threats of US decoupling, saying such a move would not be realistic nor particularly wise. President Trump has repeatedly suggested this remains an option that he has for policy.
As the two largest economies in the world, and two enormous trading partners to one another, totally disconnecting the US economy from the Chinese, and vice versa, really does seem unrealistic, threatening to do untold damage to the global economy if it is even attempted.
Chinese comments may sound familiar because they almost perfectly mirror those of President Trump’s top advisers, who say this isn’t a real option, despite Trump constantly making reference to it and threatening it.
And yet this is entirely in keeping with Trump’s limited grasp of how foreign commerce works, which already led to one ugly trade war between the US and China, and which the president continues to believe he can “win” by simply severing trade ties with America’s largest partners on the grounds that they are “unfair.”
The first trade war with China, and the harm it did to US farmers, is already a preview of why economic isolationism simply isn’t a viable strategy. Trump keeps referring to it as an option, but it likely only remains so because he fails to appreciate what damage it would truly do.
Limited grasp? Since when? Everything Trump is doing is bipartisan— and with support from every major economic actor/factor.
Sanctions have long since stoped being tool of politics — and became tool for implementing mercantilist economies of the West. US is strengthening its position by demanding that allies stop trading with “enemies” , and trade instead with US or each other, Once Washington forces allies to comply — no matter the damage to their economies — then US can focus on “enemies” of its order. Whether Russia meddled or not —matters nothing —sanctions go on. UAE — a beneficiary of Western largesse, has been ordered out of Syria, or else.
Global financial institutions serving global commerce are no more global. They are appropriated by West and threaten global trade — unless a country x,y,z capitulated to our demands. Europe capitulated on Iran — IAEA received “new and improved” management, and INSTANTLY had a memory loss, reviving issues reviewed to death prior to Iran nuclear deal. And with straight face and no shame — Europeans are signing up to the US strategy.
European governments have been over time literally infiltrated by Neocons-EU variety, and now those are in all the right places. The wrong kind have been sidelined as anti-semitic or right wing. Be that Corbin, Le Pen or Salvini.
So, what is Trump not getting it? Alliance is to be watertight before confronting “enemies” or just feeble ones trying to wiggle in the middle.
But before getting ahead of themselves, US elite are thinking of rearranging domestic politics. Irony of ironies -.slavery to be an excuse, again.
Good observation on slavery, though its more a return to serfdom.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-serfs-and-slaves?share=1#
Unless you get arrested and tossed into the prison labour system, which is a system of real slavery.
There is clearly a power struggle going on. And just like in civil war when compromises were no longer desirable — one or the other side to the conflict must take all. Or at least they think that way. Unwilling to compromise on tariffs — war was the solution, slaves one of the tools in the war toolbox. Today, a modern version is weaponized. Among other tools.
Since presumably feudal relationship between sovereign and the ruled was dumped to the heap of history, I am wondering why it persists — so naturally — in the minds of ruled and rulers until today. Whose money is it anyway?
The taxpaying public is completely comfortable with the sovereign (Dual Monarchy between Congress and President) find it natural to take all the public assets and dispose of them as they see fit to the privileged Corporate Lords and Ladies? It is treated as a privilege (contracts) without any return on such investment of public funds, lands, licenses, etc. We give money away to the said Lords and Ladies, and they are to provide “jobs”. But King’s purse is empty, owes a lots of money to other sovereigns, while money ended up chasing money in virtuous circle of higher gains, until it stopped yielding results worth the effort. Look around, and there is China — plenty of money to leverage. But they are not playing checkers, nor chess. Go is their thing.
It remains to be seen — all the Trump bashing must have a purpose. What will Biden do — and the powers that back him, stomping at the bits — differently? Clearly, nobody wants to compromise,
Will Biden and his knights with a confidence of a Southern Belle start a war?
Or the dual monarchy of Congress and President have NOTHING MUCH TO GIVE to Corporate Lords and Ladies — so they want to rule by privatizing what is left not privatized — so they will have a shot at uncooperative global cash cows?
Seems it is heading that way. Just defund (privatize) the police.
“Since presumably feudal relationship between sovereign and the ruled was dumped to the heap of history, I am wondering why it persists — so naturally — in the minds of ruled and rulers until today.”
Because changing the name of a relationship doesn’t change the relationship.
Actually, making the police carry professional liability insurance is the answer. Bad cops eventually can’t afford the premiums or become uninsurable and so unemployable.
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/01/police-reform-insurance/
Only such a free market mechanism, can avoid the politicization of policing. You will notice, no-one is promoting ‘insure the cops’ in the MSM or the increasingly captured alternative media.
https://www.facebook.com/insurethepolice/posts
Recall that one of the biggest pop culture hits has been ‘Game of Thrones’, a game of warring royalities. We live such fiction as freemen and fellow nobles… not as peasants.
When someone does make the connection, they are soundly panned as silly, like when David Brin criticized the elitist values of Star Wars:
http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/starwars1.html
We regularly internalize elitist memes through pop culture.
Decoupling is necessary, the CCP has no intention to honor trade agreements.
Dothe RNC or DNC honor all their trade agreements?
Yes.
Seriously? Only a politician can provide an answer like that with a straight face. You know this is not true, everybody here knows it is not true — what is the point?
Compared to China they are boy scouts.
RNC and DNC? Yes, they are Boy Scouts pretending to be adults. Do they honor agreements? No. Honor laws of US, no. Care about the stability and tranquility if nation? No. They know only their partisan games, talking points, and genuflecting to their financial donors.
As for US — ever honored an agreement that it did not itch to get out off — and eventually it is accomplished?
I do not recall much. UN is still standing — let us see how long.
I’m talking about TRADE agreements,
China is the biggest cheat on the planet re TRADE.
We should not ignore that we should de-couple re TRADE.
Regarding military posture,
I’m all in to completely leave the ME, SKorea and Europe.
But TRADE was the issue above.
Actually the CFA Franc/ECO is the biggest trade scam going, but whatever…
Well the biggest trade deficits (in history)
not to mention the biggest thieft of intellectual property (in history)
is committed by the CCP. End it.
China is the great assembler, not the great manufacturer. Remove the value-added and the trade deficit with China is the same as the trade deficit with the EU.
Trade deficits are still calculated by the old model of products being developed and manufactured completely within a country of origin. iPhones, for example, are sourced globally for assembly from U.S.-based patents but calculated as if China owned the IP and made everything in China.
China is where Western industry goes to avoid Western environmental, financial, and labour regs.
Tech is the wild wild West; everyone poaches IP. China, is no different.
Israel’s IP thefts from the U.S. are far more serious and extensive. Israel has entered a level of tech independence China can only dream of, selling U.S. and U.S.-derived tech to Asia freely with the U.S. being unable to stop them or even be critical.
The last item you mention, was the basis for creating China’s tech Achilles heel – they can’t make their own highest-level IP, and, there was never any incentive to. Until now.
Everybody else are petty thieves, China is the mafia when it comes to intellectual property theft. Nobody else is even close.
That is a doubtful statement. Mafia can enforce; China cannot. China is helpless in the domestic U.S.A..
https://fee.org/articles/is-china-stealing-intellectual-property-and-does-it-matter/
Israel has stolen freely from the U.S. with no opposition or complaint whatsoever save from a few intel white hats like Phil Giraldi.
If anything, Trump’s blame China IP war is a move to protect Israeli U.S. IP thefts and keep them viable on the Asian market.
https://gosint.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/former-cia-phil-giraldi-israel-steals-us-technology/
China also invested heavily in U.S. universities creating new IP. however, this would also compete with Israel’s dominance in U.S. universities.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-pol-universities-ban-huawei-funding-donations-20190321-story.html
It would be embarrassing to be “the mafia” for a crime that can’t exist (information is not property).
https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Intellectual+Property
Yes, I’m well aware of the BELIEF that information is property. It’s one of the most persistent superstitions of the last 300 years, and among the most heavily exploited by the ruling class.
More than a “belief”, it’s logical, incentivizing and the international law.
I thought you were a libertarian?
I am a libertarian. That’s why I don’t support fake/false/fraudulent property claims.
Ayn Rand, founder of Objectivism, supported copyrights and patents, noting in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:[10]
Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind. Every type of
productive work involves a combination of mental and of physical effort:
of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a
material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different
types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort
required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end,
what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect
the mind’s contribution in its purest form the origination of an idea. The subject of patents and copyrights is intellectual property. … Thus the law establishes the property right of a mind to that which it has brought in existence.
Rand held that patent should be granted for limited terms only:
If it were held in perpetuity, it
would lead to the opposite of the very principle on which it is based:
it would lead, not to the earned reward of achievement, but to the
unearned support of parasitism. It would become a cumulative lien on
the production of unborn generations, which would ultimately paralyze
them. Consider what would happen if, in producing an automobile, we had
to pay royalties to the descendants of all the inventors involved,
starting with the inventor of the wheel and on up. Apart from the
impossibility of keeping such records, consider the accidental status of
such descendants and the unreality of their unearned claims.
Ayn Rand also said she wasn’t a libertarian.
While I don’t agree that she wasn’t a libertarian (she was just throwing a tantrum over not being acknowledged as the only perfect libertarian), libertarianism isn’t defined as “agreeing with Ayn Rand.”
At what cost? Midwestern farmers out, JP Morgan Stanley in; the American middle class got decoupled from China. Not the rich.
https://theenterpriseleader.com/2020/06/09/rockefeller-capital-management-l-p-acquires-new-position-in-morgan-stanley-china-a-share-fund-inc-nysecaf.html
There’s no transition plan or end goal except to take over China’s Asian/global network of suppliers and customers and eventully the Chinese financial system.
That’s not really decoupling so much as piracy for the richest Westerners on the backs of the Western middle classes.
Good luck with the plan!
Americans won’t be able to buy many products anymore as so many are manufactured in China. Maybe it’s a wake-up call though. Does one really want to support China?
I’d take China over the US any day. They don’t around bombing/invading countries.
PS: Besides, Chinese are a lot smarter than Merkans (but that is faint praise). 🙁
But, … you didn’t. Funny.
Those who have a real choice are choosing China more and more and that was happening even before Covid-19. Young people who could go to the US as students and intellectual workers are doing so in ever fewer numbers. Many are choosing to return. This is natural as the opportunities in employment there are improving whereas those here are declining.
This has been exacerbated by the attacks on Chinese, some physical and many more in the form of harassment, have stepped up in the wake of Covid-19. And Chinese parents are no longer comfortable with their kids in the US, because of racism and Covid-19. If you are in China, you are much safer from the virus than you are here
Add onto that the harassment of scientists and engineers with the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation and many universities systematically examining every piece of paperwork the Chinese do to detect the smallest errors. For this they may be and have been fired, fined and sent to prison.
To Chinese the Land of the Free seems more illusory all the time.
And at the same time, bit by bit, one sees more Westerners living in China.
The decoupling has begun, and that is good..
Few who work for a real living in the real world, not a taxpayer-guaranteed pay stub or government benefits, should be happy with this decoupling nonsense.
America just sawed off the branch they were sitting on and that’s good? Now everyone but the connected rich are going broke.
What meaningful jobs in worthwhile numbers have come back to America and what meaningful jobs and markets have been lost in exchange?
The world economies do not depend on China. And the world’s nations increasingly see China as a dangerous threat. The Wuhan Virus has proved that. Don’t be afraid of hard things, they are possible and often better.
Perhaps… but the world is rioting against the United States, not China. Racism is the pretext, but at the core is fanatical anti-Americanism. The Euro financial oligarchs play geopolitics at a very high level.
You see an end goal; I see a missing path rhetoric cannot bridge.
Trump’s infrastructure plan, probably was that bridge from a service economy oriented to China to a more balanced U.S.-first economy of manufacturing and service industries.
Such an infrastructure plan, seems now a bridge too far, too late and politically impossible. Too many interests need the U.S. economy and Trump to fail.
Timing was critical; a serious infrastructure plan had to be underway before cutting China loose. There really wasn’t any reason to antagonize China; they knew the economy was leaving them behind just as it had the Americans in the late 1970s..
China is a sideshow; the prize is control of the U.S. dollar and War Machine by European financial oligarchs without pesky Americans wanting liberty and freedoms.
“There really wasn’t any reason to antagonize China”, what?
CHINA unleashed the Kung Flu on the world!!!
They have antagonized the world. They have no intention of honoring trade agreements or any other international norms that get in their way. Just cut them loose.
Ditto, Germany and NATO, they are more trouble than they are worth.
SARs-Cov-2 may have been found in sewage samples from Span, dated March 2019, well before detection in Wuhan.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2020/06/26/the-coronavirus-was-detected-in-sewage-in-march-of-2019-far-from-wuhan-china/
China may have been the origin of the core virus, but Chinese wild-collected viruses are studied around the world. Any biowarfare player could have engineered the virus – the U.S., U.K., and France are leaders in such research. The international practice of wild virus collection is ongoing, supposedly to ‘prevent’ the next pandemic, not stock biowarfare labs.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/before-the-next-pandemic-an-ambitious-push-to-catalog-viruses-in-wildlife
China and NATO may be more trouble than they are worth, but keep things in perspective.
China has never been able to dictate U.S. policy; Europe, on the other hand, does via cultural and financial soft power that can be quite hard.
Offshoring was not a Chinese idea; they had to be opened up in the late 1970s. Following the British Hong Kong model, China’s coast become an extension of Western offshored industry. That’s all over now, of course.
Who benefits? The financial oligarchs of Western Europe, ultimately. The U.S. is being forced by economic means, back into the role of dumb giant enforcer of Western hegemony, the hired muscle, not the brains of an American Empire it thinks it is.
Brock,
do you really think the CO-19 originated somewhere other than Wuhan?
Its important to be open to the possibility. The original wild virus had to be collected from China, but after that, anything goes.
However, France set up that BSL-4 lab in China. They are the last serious European imperialist power. The only threat to European hegemony, is U.S. hegemony, and to a lesser extent the Eurasian Century, though the true development gap is still quite large between the West and Eurasia.
Only European globalism stands to win on COVID-19 long term, and, under the old economic regime, only Europe was losing long term.
The U.S. and China kept getting stronger and stronger off one-another, filling out their natural global economic spaces. Size matters, and the U.S. and China are the world’s natural economic giants.
The U.S. was never in true decline; the rest of the world was just closing the development gap.
Europe is already winning the economic restart race; there’s no panic talk of a second wave. Unlike in the U.S. where globalist players are all screaming ‘second wave’ and pushing renewed lockdowns.
There is no second COVID-19 wave; its too early. A real second wave would hit in the fall cold/flu season.
In a case like this, Cuo Bono, who benefits, is the best question. China needed U.S. and world markets to thrive. COVID-19 derails all that. They can tank on, but at a reduced pace.
The U.S. likewise has no reason to release COVID-19. Blowback – extreme unintended harm to friendly forces – was the precise reason the U.S. never released bioweapons in anger.
The U.S. is faltering, with serious whisperings of civil war and reset if the Democrats aren’t returned to power. Their very ability to be so disruptive, is good reason never to vote Democratic again, because abuse relationships never get better.
The poor state of U.S. healthcare is surely not unknown to the Deep State, nor is the importance of having an economy to fight economic wars lost on most of them. Large-scale bioterrorism would be too risky for the U.S..
From this armchair, this looks less like a fight against China, but a fight for financial-political control of the U.S.A. and U.S. dollar. U.S. patriots versus European financial oligarchs and their U.S. allies.
China, is just bykill.
I agree with most of that.
I don’t agree that the Euros caused this pandemic.
The EU has suffered more than the US, so far.
China not so much, cuo bono?.
China wants world domination and we all know they have a significant bio-lab in Wuhan which, we also know, is NOT particularly scrupulous in handling deadly contagions.
I think the better explanation is an accident
that unleashed it in Wuhan,
with the CCP quickly quarantining the province for containment
BUT realizing it’s attack value allowed it to travel to Europe the US etc.
What attack value? China would have destroyed their most lucrative export markets by attacking the U.S. and Europe, and unlike the U.S. and Europe, they have no replacement internal market developed.
Europe suffered not at all as far as the elites matter. They cleaned out their old folks homes of useless eaters and put the Yellow Vests on ice for a time, while introducing the pretext for increased social surveillance in the name of fighting the pandemic. The world was already entering an economic down-cycle; COVID-19 can be blamed, not politicians.
Europe will clean up loaning restart money to the developing world as well. Apart from locking out Sweden, Europe is already opening up to tourist travel with Spain first in line.
COVID-19 has two major strains; European, and Asian, with the European strain being the dominant infection in the U.S. on both coasts.
The Asian strains were quickly contained because Asian-Americans and Asian-Europeans returning from Asia self-quarantined and wore masks (an unnecessary flourish).
Europeans, however, traveled freely to and from the U.S. even after China flights were suspended by Trump.
Western countries pursue world domination; China has no history of ever doing so.
China is unlikely to have released two strains of a deadly virus at the same time, accidentally or as a weapon.
The Wuhan lab was up and running for only a couple of years since 2015; that’s not enough time to develop a nasty bug without international help.
Again, Spain found traces of coronavirus from March 2019. From the bioterrorism angle, this suggests European testing of some version of n-coronavirus.
The Asian strain does not appear to have had enough time to mutate into a full-fledged European strain under natural conditions. Otherwise, there should be far more major strains of COVID-19 marked for specific population sub-groups.
Read the Oxford report on China-U.S. trade:
https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/Oxford%20Economics%20US%20Jobs%20and%20China%20Trade%20Report.pdf
The GDP chart on page 7 lists nations benefiting from China trade. China is on top – because China went from an undeveloped country to a developed one overnight. All countries benefited according to level of development, including Russia.
Page 9 lists the real income gains – and the U.S. is fourth behind Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. The Anglo-Pacific countries went from middle-class backwaters to world class overnight trading with China.
The U.S. was saddled with crippling wars and an aged and de-industrialized infrastructure, but still winning.
Had these trends continued, and President Trump able to initiate American infrastructure building over war spending, U.S. GDP growth would quickly jump to match China’s, since so much of the U.S. needs to be rebuilt to modern standards.
The U.S. doesn’t need wars, hot, cold, or trade; the U.S. needed peaceful development. So did China. Neither needed COVID-19.
Many middle-class Americans got rich trading with China; you may feel better sinking their boat, but yours is still sunk.
A new service, value-added economy replaced an obsolete manufacturing economy that was only partially rebuilt in China.
Apple, for example, still owns the IP on iPhones and collects the profits from worldwide sales, including to Chinese. The leaps in technology, AI and automation, would never have been supported by the U.S. working class. Each innovation devaluing labour to mere assembly work would never have gone down well domestically.
The disaster of the trade war, exposed the glaring myth that ‘China stole our jobs’. China was never in a position to demand American jobs. Chinese workers are being tossed out of work now far more openly than the American workers were.
Great place. I spent12 years there.
They’re isn’t a better place at the moment anywhere on the planet. China’s is the most advanced in everything. The west is a sh.thole!
If someone out does you at your own game it’s a little hard to take but not worth starting a war over. China has been around awhile and there is a lot we can learn from them not the least of which are these five year plans they come up with. Example: while we take forever to decide if we really need a high speed rail system they are laying track and getting it done. If China had not modernized they would be occupied by and serving western landlords in their own country, they learned about us from the past.
Five-year plans are a feature of an autocratic, centrally controlled government, and we’ve beat the Chinese.
The plan we’ve got, is some sort of nebulous green tyranny pretexted on health (COVID-19) and the environment (climate change).
Decoupling is done as preparation for war with China. Maybe it will be mostly Cold War 2, but even if so, cold war is sometimes hot war too.
The US has eyed China as the replacement enemy, once the USSR was gone and could no longer justify the huge US military.
The one thing that can’t be allowed it the reduction of the US military. All else falls before that, even international trade.
All warpaths lead to Russia. Its Mackinderan destiny.
The Ukraine is a poor doormat; it must be China then, for no other reason than being the last untried path of war to Russia.
[In the meantime, only the American middle class has been decoupled from China, whether farmers, manufacturers, or entrepreneurs.
JP Morgan Stanely and Goldman Sachs of the financial aristocracy are in China. They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t expect to do Chinese business, long term and profitably.
Sinophobe chumps just got pwned, or rather, pwned their neighbors that had done well in China.]
Mackinder was about the Eurasian landmass. China is the size of CONUS in area and four times the population. That is the current “center” of Eurasia, in the Schwerepunkt doctrine sense of “center of mass.”
China is the largest and most powerful Rimland. Mackinder’s Heartland is roughly the central Eurasian plains; the ‘Stans and Russia mostly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimland
Nicholas John Spykeman, a student of Mackinder, hypothesized that the Rimland could control the Hearltland. The big prizes are the Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Iran. India is important, but cut off by the Himalayas.
China has a bit of heartland at its western frontier; most of China’s history was pushing back against barbarian invasions from the Heartland since the Great Wall.
However, China is also Sea Power, as characterized by Alfred Thayer Mahan (The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1890).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Influence_of_Sea_Power_upon_History
In centre-of-mass terms, China is the industrial-financial centre of mass for Eurasia. However, China is not the Heartland; that is mostly Russia.
China is goosed up by oceanic trade, but Russia has been the source of innovation, whether Marxism or the AK-47. China’s culture has discouraged self-innovation since the burning and slaughter of the Confucians.
Intellectual censure is a universal trait though; in the U.S., the Progressives and their tech allies are on a cancel culture rampage. Knowledge is power, after all.
Ironically, Trump is simultaneously demanding China open their economy up to U.S./Western interests even as he demands greater U.S. autarchy.
The autarchic authoritarian visions pushed by either side of the duopoly, is China-envy of an autocratic surveillance state with a controlled economy. They just differ in the details.
All the trade skirmish was supposed to be about, was opening up China a little more, faster. now its being treated as existential.
And it is – to the Trump Administration. Should’ve gone with a Chinagate…
When Biden comes in, the Eurasian gloves come off. Obama, then Trump, both played the Presidential personal relationship card. Putin and Xi won’t be had twice, and Xi didn’t really give Trump a chance to fool him.
Ironically, Trump is simultaneously demanding China open their economy up to U.S./Western interests even as he demands greater U.S. autarchy.
The autarchic authoritarian visions pushed by either side of the duopoly, is China-envy of an autocratic surveillance state with a controlled economy. They just differ in the details.
All the trade skirmish was supposed to be about, was opening up China a little more, faster. now its being treated as existential.
And it is – to the Trump Administration. Should’ve gone with a Chinagate…
When Biden comes in, the Eurasian gloves come off. Obama, then Trump, both played the Presidential personal relationship card. Putin and Xi won’t be had twice, and Xi didn’t really give Trump a chance to fool him.
Decoupling will occur to the extent that Chinese manufacturers find lower input costs by moving operations to nearby countries.
In a world where business is increasingly trying to increase margin amidst higher unemployment and taxes, that’s no longer inconceivable.
That may be where the real contest is; separating Beijing from its economic satellites and re-orienting them around Washington.
Basically, the same post-Cold War NATO playbook used against Russia, co-opting former Soviet satellites, translated into economic warfare and a China economic encirclement.
Reshoring to the U.S.A., ain’t happening. That’s just talk to inspire supposed short-term sacrifice for long term gains that never happen.
Beijing is the centre of Asia not just because of geography; but geography translated into a honking big economic pie that floats every boat in Asia.
Servicing just the U.S. economy, sets Asian economies back to 1980s-level subservience to the U.S., all and no one big enough to grow past the middle income trap, and sliding back to the low income trap.