Post-corona, the working class will blow a gasket over Chinese trade

NY Post ^ | 31 March 2020 | Sohrab Ahmari

[BeauBo]

I lost my secure, well-paying manufacturing job to free trade with the People’s Republic of China, and all I got was this damn virus that killed Grandma — and shut down even the lousy, ­insecure service-industry gig the Chinese had left me.

Whether the political and journalistic classes like it or not, that’s how many working-class and left-behind Americans will politically interpret the events of the past couple of months.

And not just Americans, but similarly situated voters across the developed world: Britons who backed Brexit, Italians who support the populist League and Five Star Movement, Spaniards who pull for the nationalist Vox party and Frenchmen... and so on...

At some point, the virus will pass. Then, the full scale of the damage will become apparent — not only to their own lives and ­finances, but to their neighbors and communities.

That’s when anger — the most powerful passion of the demos — will set in. Whom will they blame?

...It wasn’t Trump, remember, who thought it was a good idea to deeply entangle our economy and way of life with a totalitarian Communist regime that, as we speak, keeps more than a million Muslims in “re-education camps,” a regime that harvests the organs of political prisoners and thinks nothing of hiding the truth about a highly contagious virus ravaging a city of 11 million.

No, it wasn’t Trump who did that.

...Our China entanglement was the handiwork of highly credentialed imbeciles, in Europe and America, who promoted the idea that ­national barriers were an impediment to human freedom and were bound to fade away with ever-deeper economic integration.

[canuck_conservative]

It wasn’t just that the Elites oversold the benefits of globalization, they completely ignored the drawbacks.

Indeed, they even insulted anyone who raised any opposition, portraying them as racist rubes who were “stuck in the past”.

Globalization was the inevitable arrow to the future!

Maybe not so inevitable now ...

[HighSierra5]

Meanwhile,Jared is letting the Chicoms deliver medical supplies to America. Bad optics.

[edwinland]

WOW!! That last paragraph gave me goosebumps. Just wow.

[ClearCase_guy]

Nations need to boycott China until it collapses.

[Alberta's Child]

I see a Divine band in all of this ... and perhaps He has given us a retarded misfit unraveling before our eyes, mumbling gibberish on national TV as he carries the banner of open-borders globalism into our presidential election as the Democratic Party front-runner.

[Trump.Deplorable]

Ideology kills

We need those supplies

We can move manufacturing back, it took us decades to move it all there, it isn’t going to come all back overnight.

[tbw2]

Impeachment and the Deep State undermining his presidency distracted him from the Wuhan flu outbreak.

And liberals in the Deep State chose to put us at risk in order to undermine Trump.

Coronavirus-infected Americans flown home against CDC’s advice
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-diamond-princess-cruise-americans/2020/02/20/b6f54cae-5279-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

Trump Was Furious That Passengers With Coronavirus Were Brought Back to U.S.
Among the passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship who were flown back were 14 American citizens who tested positive for the virus. The move took Mr. Trump by surprise.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/22/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-cruise-ship.html

[PGR88]

America will need to adjust its education system, particularly higher-education - which would be a GOOD thing.

More technical training, less general-education and liberal arts college. Fake social justice degrees would simply disappear if government stopped issuing education debt. Leftist puppy mills like Oberlin should be allowed to fail.

[omega4412]

Wuhan virus cures globalism

[VTenigma]

Ditto, I’m using that as a like button.

[Zhang Fei]

[Meanwhile,Jared is letting the Chicoms deliver medical supplies to America. Bad optics.]

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Most companies will take months to get US production going. Trump needs to get the mortality number down *today*. We are at 700 dead a day and climbing. McKesson & other medical supply companies can get air freight shipments from the Chinese suppliers with whom they have pre-existing contracts, whose products are currently used in US hospitals, within 24 hours. It’s a trade-off between the optics of thousands or tens of thousands of additional dead (elderly Trump voters) and Chinese suppliers, for now. I suspect he’ll choose the temporary expedient of leaning on Chinese suppliers until domestic suppliers are up to speed.

[SendShaqtoIraq]

i don’t want supplies that they are deliberately tampering with (calibrating thermometers to read degrees lower), wiping on their feet, defective masks and tests.

[TexasFreeper2009]

quote “keeps more than a million Muslims in “re-education camps,”

I have no problem with that.

[HighSierra5]

I still don’t like Jared.

[neverevergiveup]

Our educational system needs to change, for sure, but we didn't lose jobs to China because of our educational system. We lost them because we chose to ‘compete’ in an unfree ‘free market’ against a totalitarian government that can subsidize and undercut pricing selectively, on any product they choose.

We also chose to compete against a totalitarian state that does not recognize patents and intellectual property.

[MonicaG]

Love your post, totally agree.

[datura]

Let’s get the virus under control, Americans back to work, and invest in our own Marshall Plan of sorts - rebuild our supply chains inside the USA to include mining for our own raw materials again.

The WTO needs to go the way of the Paris climate treaty.

End our participation in the UN and any other “World Organizations”. Require all items purchased by government at any level using taxpayer funds be manufactured in the USA. Let other nations deal with us (or not) directly.

It might take a few years, but our economy would rule the world, again.

[MrEdd]

You should recall that Billy Graham spent the last few years of his life mentoring Donald Trump.

Billy Graham had a birthday...Christian media had articles and there was Trump in the picture. Billy Graham went on a spiritual retreat...there was this rich and famous playboy in the pictures. Why?

During the 2016 primaries I asked a lot of #NeverTrumpers on this forum what was Billy Graham doing with this guy these past years if he is so irredeemable?

I believe that Donald Trump is our Gideon.
And so many of our pastors and church leaders reacted to him in the same way that the Israelites reacted to Gideon.

[Zhang Fei]

[I still don’t like Jared.]

---

I suspect the couple is fairly liberal. But one thing Trump can likely trust them to do is not leak against him. He can also trust them to not sabotage his orders, despite their personal qualms. That’s what loyalty means, acting against personal inclinations/beliefs because of personal ties.