1w ago

Reading the Trade War Tea Leaves

I just posted the below as a comment but I figured I'd start a thread, too, because I'm curious and I feel like a week of obsessive news reading hasn't really shed any clarity on anything.

Now that China has refused to back down from Trump's escalation, I'm wondering how Trump is going to wiggle out of this one. He can announce a 90 day pause with some lie about how China begged him to come to the table to save face domestically, but that maneuver might not actually bring China to negotiations. China seems to be in "never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake" mode and I don't see them responding to something like a temporary pause.

The pro tariff crowd seems to be thinking that China will go into a recession before the US does, so the US will win the game of chicken, but China probably has more options for responding to a recession, especially given the fact that the government isn't a bunch of idiotic, bumbling aristocrats and the flight from the US bond market has continued. No one is going to want to lend us the money it'll take to weather a serious downturn given the fact that we're run by crazy people.

So, assuming Trump is made to see the warning lights again, what does he ask for? He has jiu-jitsu'd himself into a no-win position because reshoring all of the manufacturing that left four decades ago is a nonstarter. I guess he could demand that China agrees to import a certain amount of US goods to lower the trade deficit, but they made that offer last time and then immediately ignored it because why wouldn't they? It's unenforceable because any retaliatory action the US could take brings us right back here. So what is a non-idiotic offer to China to get talks started? What will their opening demands be?

31 comments

Lemme get my armchair. I think Trump's number one mistake was fucking with China. America can bully weaker nations like Canada or Greenland no problem. And if they want to do that, there's little the rest of the world is going to do about it, for various reasons. But China?
One has to assume there are people in positions of power who truly buy into the propaganda of American exceptionalism or, more likely, they´re either true believers or so closely tied to Trump that they can be nothing more than yes-men.
Either way. If China wanted to, they could fuck up America's shit hard. They could make 2008 look like a happy memory.
Now you're gonna say, "But China would suffer too." True but the U.S. is already a deeply divided nation. If Trump fucks with the money, even his supposed "allies" on the right will start putting a target on his back. Simply put, China can point to the U.S. as the enemy and use that to further unite its population. Meanwhile, outside of MAGA circles, no one's going to buy into the narrative in America that this is Chinas fault. And even among right-wingers, the smarter ones will see that Trump is fucking things up for everyone.
It’s almost funny Trump probably could annex Greenland without much trouble. But fucking with China? You don’t fuck with the money, Donnie.
- I guess one path out of this is Acting President Vance sweatily walking back his "peasants" comment as Trump winds up in the hospital suffering from a mysterious heart condition, but the money people seem to be comfortable profiting from the chaos for the moment.
  
  I guess one path out of this is Acting President Vance sweatily walking back his "peasants" comment
  He would never do that. Americans already believe that Chinese people are subhuman, unthinking communist masses. Also people like Vance of have no concept of humility, only a smug superiority complex.
  
  It wouldn't surprise me if the peasants comment was an intentional one. This way he gets to tell the chuds that anything China does is because they are 'too sensitive about a little joke' and woke just like the democrats and they are working together to take away your beef
  
  It wouldn't surprise me if the peasants comment was an intentional one.
  Of course it was. People like Vance are convinced that they're superior to everyone else
  
  Unless he got a phone call saying that the heart attack gun would hit him next unless he fixed things.
  
  Unless he got a phone call saying that the heart attack gun would hit him next unless he fixed things.
  The headline:
  Havana Syndrome Targets Vice President JD Vance: Will the Communist Cuban Superweapon ever Stop?
- China can point to the U.S. as the enemy and use that to further unite its population.
  It's not even just the Chinese population. The US is becoming very unpopular here in Europe. Anti US feeling used to be quite fringe but is now mainstream and suddenly China isn't the bogeyman it was.
  
  Yeah lol seeing the social media campaigns to "buy Canadian" or "Buy European" is some choice irony.

31 comments

Havana Syndrome Targets Vice President JD Vance: Will the Communist Cuban Superweapon ever Stop?