Posted on 07/04/2022 4:07:13 AM PDT by FarCenter
The United States and China corralled their allies for major summits in recent days, sounding an eerie echo of Cold War-era rival blocs.
On his part, US President Joseph Biden met fellow G7 leaders in Schloss Elmau in southern Germany, where they discussed shared strategic concerns over both Russia and China. Collectively, the seven leading Western nations pledged up to $600 billion to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the developing world.
The US president made it clear that the just-launched “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment” initiative isn’t “aid or charity”, but instead represents a strategic investment so that developing nations see the “concrete benefits of partnering with democracies.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed Washington’s ideological line by arguing that the new initiative shows how “Democracies, when they work together, provide the single best path to deliver results for our people and people all over the world.”
On the other side of the divide, China hosted a virtual summit of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations, where President Xi Jinping pledged massive investment in South-South Cooperation and called on fellow emerging powers to “support each other on issues concerning core interests” and “reject hegemony, bullying and division.”
In a thinly-veiled swipe at Western powers, Xi criticized “attempt[s] to expand military alliances to seek absolute security, stoke bloc-based confrontation by coercing other countries into picking sides, and pursue unilateral dominance at the expense of others’ rights and interests.”
In a more than 7,300-word joint statement, the so-called Beijing Declaration, the BRICS powers effectively called for a new global order that better reflects the interests of emerging nations.
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
BRICS is about to grow by Argentina and Iran. The new bipolar world is the decadent west, doing everything possible to export their decadence globally and the rest of the world’s countries trying to maintain their individual cultures and independence. While the west exports social BS and economic devastation, the BRICS alliance is concentrating on growing its energy and food production. The west’s main goal seems to be destroying its own food and energy production. I expect most of the OPEC countries to align with BRICS. The Saudis fear and despise the west’s New Green Deal and it’s proselytizing about perversions and atheism. The American consumer would be much better off in BRICS rather than suffering the globalists of the US and EU. As far as individual freedom goes, there’s very little difference in the two blocks.
Excellent post.
BTW, Saudi Arabia has already applied to try and join BRICS.
What makes this situation unique is that the leader of one bloc (China) is being financed by the leader of the other bloc (the United States).
Trump realized this, and he tried to bring our industry back home. But too many special interests were against it. So Trump had to go.
The problem with the Belt And Road project, the economic one, not the political one of debt diplomacy is:
If you grow, say wheat and corn and you need to get it to market and you don’t have a handy river to float it, or you aren’t near a major port is, you must build infrastructure. Roads, bridges and railroads cost a lot more to construct than a barge. Floating stuff to the market costs about a twelfth the cost of any other transport mode. Therefore, countries with horrible geography, like almost every place in Russia, are doomed to be poor because of the high cost of getting what they grow or make to the people who need it. If they artificially develop an increased population based on expensive infrastructure and something happens to that infrastructure, like it gets cut off by bandits controlling a pass, then the population is always one interruption away from starvation and collapse. (The more countries your product has to transit on this new infrastructure, the greater the danger and cost. Your exports will NEVER be cost competitive. Are there any success stories for BAR where countries have been able to profit and pay back the debt to the Chinese without losing a port?)
Also, any dealings with the CCP are fraught with danger. The CCP is the scorpion you swim across the river on your shoulder. It will sting you and as you die it will say, “I’m a scorpion. You knew that when you agreed to take me across.”
China builds railroads. America will probably preach the Green New Deal, transgenderism and try to sell electric cars to Burkina Faso.
Which will go down like very cold fried chicken at a BLM party. Chuckle.
It's the other way round.
America doesn't have money to give anybody without massive borrowing. And America has huge trade deficits with China. And its China that was buying US debt not the other way round.
> America has huge trade deficits with China. <
Yes, that’s what I was referring to. We are financing China’s expansion not by giving them money from the Treasury, but by buying their cheap junk.
The West could win any potential power struggle easily if they got serious about it. Russia is the largest commodity supplier in the world and China is the “world’s workshop”.
But who has by a mile the largest markets? The Anglosphere + Europe + Japan *IF* they got serious and slapped steadily rising tariffs on Chinese goods could win this power struggle. Of course that would be painful to Western consumers and it would require pulling a lot of Western Elites away from their illicit Chinese cash - no doubt they would kick and scream all the way - but this could be done.
IMO, its long past time we did exactly that. Re-open the rare earths mines. Build silicon chip manufacturing plants. Drill/Frack our own oil and gas. Bring the complete supply chain for medical supplies and pharmaceuticals back. Ditto for defense system components. Then when that is done, start bringing back the manufacture of everyday products.
Basically undo everything that was done starting in the 90s.
Exactly correct. I said the same thing. Cut off the money spigot from the West - and America in particular - and China is screwed.
Apple (market cap $2.2 Trillion), will have a huge chunk of their profits wiped out if the Chinese stop making their iPhones etc at very low costs in China.
And America is screwed even more.
Where will you get all your consumer electronics, shoes, clothes etc from?
Pain? You mean the "pain" of a revitalized modernized industrial sector, jobs, financial benefit and prosperity? That kind of "pain"?
Here in the USA. With high import tariffs you raise prices so products would still be available while the USA retools.
It takes about a year to build a factory. We'd be fine in the LONG term but the problem is misguided butt faced losers only think in quarters....
BS. The amount of labor per iPhone is around $30.00 made with coolie labor. Google it. Even if iPhones were made in the USA the labor were to double per phone to say $60 it would not be a "crises" since an iPhone now costs more that $800.00.
So why are they not making them in the US?
Greed, myopia and corruption. The bean counters will do what bean counters do. They will move already profitable USA production factories overseas to increase profit by 1/2 of 1%. The will idle thousands of US workers, destroy communities for that tiny profit increase. Why? Because the USA has a tariff free policy for incoming but puts up with other countries protectionism. It takes great deal of corruption to pull that off. Notice how the one issue where the sniveling GOPe RINOs are all aboard with Biden is regarding lifting tariffs. They are willing to get rid of "Trump tariffs". Quislings all...
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