Posted on 04/14/2025 5:00:56 AM PDT by MtnClimber
China's trade war bluff may backfire as the U.S. pushes allies to choose between a rogue economic actor and a flawed but fairer partner with unmatched global power.
No one wants a “trade war” with China, or for that matter with any nation. Nonetheless, China has been waging one for years and is now locked in a tariff recalibration with the Trump administration.
In this American effort to find trade parity and equity, China can do some short-term damage to the U.S., especially in terms of ceasing exports of some pharmaceuticals, phones, and computers. But ultimately, it cannot win—and will eventually lose catastrophically. It will likely accept that reality sooner rather than later.
We are only in the first week of the escalating rhetoric and tariffs. But already China is appealing to its Asian rivals, Australia, and the EU to join in fighting the supposed American bully.
But so far, there are understandably few takers.
An exasperated China is now also running vintage Korean War-era propaganda videos of Mao Zedong bragging about how he was standing up to then-President Dwight Eisenhower.
Does Beijing really believe that airing ossified threats from decades ago—issued by the greatest mass killer in human history to the one U.S. president who warned of the military-industrial complex—is going to win over neutral nations?
Or maybe China thinks calls to Western nations to stop American trade “bullying” will resonate—this, from the greatest trade bully, cheat, and rogue commercial nation in history.
China is running a nearly $1-trillion trade surplus with the world. Its mercantilism is the result of market manipulations, product dumping, asymmetrical tariffs, patent, copyright and technology theft, a corrupt Chinese judicial system, and Western laxity—or what might be mildly called “bullying.” The U.S. accounts for about a third of China’s trade surplus
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
China seems overextended in it’s Belt and Road program. It may not take much to make it all come tumbling down.
VDH ping
It will backfire. The US will have troubles at first including some inflation as goods must be sought from other sources to replace those from China. China will have major long term problems. There simply is no replacement for the largest consumer market on earth. Its not just those items sold directly to the US. Think of all the things they sell to other countries which are assembled there before being shipped to the US or which serve as components to things shipped to the US. Those secondary sales are going to get hit too. IF more countries start erecting tariff barriers to the import of Chinese goods (like the EU for example) its only going to get that much worse.
Add to their troubles, it’s debt.
Maybe it is time to forcefully and intentionally replace all China Pharmaceuticals with other, friendly nations while we rebuild our own industry. This presents an opportunity that must be taken.
You are right about China being overextended in its Belt and Road program. I have felt this for a long time.
If China really does reduce most of its exports to the U.S., America will have to scramble for a year or so to establish new supply chains and some alternate importers of U.S. products. But after a year of gradual dislocation, China will begin to hemorrhage, and then quite suddenly, given the U.S. has almost all the advantages—if it chooses to use them.
VDH agrees with many FReepers. An extended trade war will destroy China, but hurt the U.S. only temporarily as we shift to new supply chains.
China’s economy is already precarious. Reports of increased homelessness, unemployment and disaffection are out there if you know where to look. There are numerous reports of employees going 6 months or more without being paid. Workers in a few situations burned their factories down rather than put up with it any longer.
CC
The Sky Falls! Trump Hikes China Tariffs to 125%, Chinese Bosses Wake Up to Millions in Lost Orders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcXB12HGZjo
Kyle Bass: Why the Chinese Economy is Going to Collapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYZqkVGOT4g
The world abandons China in a spectacular display of loyalty to Donald Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbFyq0DlBx0
President Xi and the CCP welcome the business killing tariffs. Chinese business and industry will finally starve and die. Xi has been hard at work for the last 5 or 6 years to kill off for all time the capitalistic disease infecting China
The resulting corpses will be owned by the banks holding all the debt. The banks are in fact the CCP. the result is that all business and industry will be freed, cut lose, from the golden bands of Entreprenurial Capitalism that had rapidly evolved during thelast thirty years.
A purer form of traditional Maoist communism can rise from the destruction. Rather than communal farms, the good communist citizenry will return to work for communal business and industrial communist corporations.
And the countries at the receiving end of the belt snd road program are waking up to the fact that the stuff they’re building is crap.
CC
To parphrase Margaret Thatcher - “Now is not the time to go wobbly...”
Don’t buy chinese junk!
Once the customer goes away, it typically takes 4x the expense of bringing the customers back than it did to just maintain good relations in the first place.
As they say, China is a hyperboloid of the first order.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBsQOTvWL3Q
The reestablishment of purer communism in China is more important than trying to maintain a customer base.
Time is not of the essence. The end result of the process of re-communestization is the essence of the Xi effort
“IF more countries start erecting tariff barriers to the import of Chinese goods (like the EU for example) its only going to get that much worse.”
Keep in mind, going to other sources for product will require significant changes to the supply chain.
In its propaganda war, China is relying on its most loyal servants and paid lapdogs, the global media to carry its water.
At the same time, China is calling in all its chits from the politicians it has ‘invested’ in over the decades, in the US and abroad, to bleat loudly and indignantly about the wrongs being heaped upon poor little defenseless China.
we’ve been in a trade war for decades.
Sadly the US would go no further than occasionally ask for non-tariff barriers to be reduced. That is how we were fighting this war.
Finally we have a president who is engaging in a campaign to actually win this conflict. Good for us.
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