'This is so hard': The Chinese small businesses brought to a standstill by Trump's tariffs

"Trump is a crazy man," says Lionel Xu, who is surrounded by his company's mosquito repellent kits – many were once best sellers in Walmart stores in the United States.

Now those products are sitting in boxes in a warehouse in China and will remain there unless President Donald Trump lifts his 145% tariffs on all Chinese goods bound for the US.

Around half of all products made by his company Sorbo Technology are sold to the US.

It is a small company by Chinese standards and has around 400 workers in Zhejiang province. But they are not alone in feeling the pain of this economic war.

"We are worried. What if Trump doesn't change his mind? That will be a dangerous thing for our factory," says Mr Xu.

Nearby, Amy is helping to sell ice cream makers at her booth for the Guangdong Sailing Trade Company. Her key buyers, including Walmart, are also in the US.

"We have stopped production already," she says. "All the products are in the warehouse."

"We hope to open the new European market. Maybe Saudi Arabia - and of course Russia," she adds.

Please bear with me. I know this is a long post (as many of my posts these days are) but we need to acknowledge that this dynamic, of everyday Chinese citizens being squeezed is part of a larger threat we need to acknowledge and be aware of, because the ramifications can go in many directions. NOTE: This is not anti-tariff in any way. We MUST protect ourselves against an unscrupulous, tyrannical, inhuman, and dangerous foe. We have no choice, and in my opinion, this is the appropriate course of action. But we MUST do it with our eyes open.

We have been at war with Communist China for decades now. We have simply refused to acknowledge they have been waging war against us.

As always in these kinds of things, we likely would have no problem finding common ground with everyday Chinese citizens and having good relations. As long as there have been humans, this is largely true. It is the governments that we often dislike about each other, and for good reason.

The CCP is one of the most bloodthirsty and evil regimes in the history of the world. There is no humanity in them, only the Party.

But as the CCP has waged war on the USA for decades, the deliberately caused pain, disenfranchisement, and even death of Americans is just as real as that pain that may be deliberately inflicted on Chinese citizens that is caused by our efforts to justly defend ourselves.

AND IF THAT PAIN HAPPENS, IT IS BECAUSE IT MUST HAPPEN. THE ONLY THING THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY WILL RESPOND TO IS PAIN.

We are, and have been at war, and we need to keep that in mind. This is war.

Most people do not perceive the house of cards that Communist China has built for itself. They have serious issues that, being from a shame-based, racist, arrogant culture, they cannot even publicly acknowledge, which is an extremely dangerous reality.

Americans have been told for decades by both the CCP and our own government and talking heads that China is going to rule the economic world and displace the USA. But it ignores the harsh realities they face that they CCP will not acknowledge exist in their country.

Make no mistake-they have carefully and deliberately engineered a system to dismember the industrial base of their greatest foe in the world which is the United States, because even today, with all of our faults, we are the ideologic counterweight in the world with our codified respect for the individual (still) to their absolute tyranny. The fact that they have put a velvet glove over that iron fist holding the Marxist/Maoist rose does not change the fact that it is still an iron fist.

The problem for the Chinese Communists is that they have inextricably tied their fate to ours, in the same way we let our fate be tied to theirs.

The difference is: We can still force our government to change its mind and its course. We still have elections, as flawed as they are, and can still change our leadership and our direction, both statements of fact verified by the 2024 election in which it became “too big to rig”.

Communist China cannot do this. They can only crush their own citizens like this “small business brought to a standstill by Trump’s Tariffs”.

So. They have hollowed out our industrial base with the willing, greedy, and treasonous help of our own countrymen, but in doing so, they have insured that our “big naval guns” that America can bring to bear on them, the guns of individual Americans holding up dollar bills to buy products the Communist make, will do the greatest damage to themselves.

In other words, they have deliberately positioned themselves to allow the greatest damage to be done to them by us.

We are going to get hurt ourselves by this, there is no doubt, when the Communist Chinese decide to ban the purchase of certain American goods such as Boeing airliners to retaliate. And we will face shortages or outright be unable to obtain the replacement lithium batteries of our iPhones, or the computer chips for our weaponry built by our defense contractors.

And those things will be not only inconvenient and painful, but also strategically dangerous for America.

But tens or hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens are employed in tens of thousands of factories in China building everything from Bobble-head Jesus dolls to put on the dashboard of your car to buttons that would be sewed onto shirts being manufactured in other Chinese factories.

America will suffer both personally and strategically when we can’t sell those Boeing airliners to China or get a new battery for our iPhone.

But we don’t have to buy the Bobble-head Jesus doll, the shirt, or any other number of Chinese produced goods that we likely refer to as “Chinese Junk”, and there is a lot of it. We just don’t have to buy it. And that won’t make us suffer.

But it will make those millions of Chinese working in thousands of factories suffer, and it will make the Comments Chinese Government suffer, because as those Chinese factories don’t sell their product to Americans who had formerly been waving their dollar bills in the air but have since recognized the dangerous spot we are in and are going to put those dollar bills back into their wallets.

At that point, the CCP is going to have to figure out what to do with those Chinese citizens who are NOT members of the inner party, tens or hundreds of millions of them, who are going to need poultry, seafood, rice, cooking oil, soy sauce, heating fuel, and gasoline, but whose products are no longer being produced because they cannot be sold to Americans who have decided they can do without a Bobble-head Jesus doll. It is a ticking time bomb for them.

And that creates great danger. As you have said, we MUST do it. It is criminal we have come to this point where we are approaching $37 Trillion in debt, are increasing our debt by $1 Trillion dollars every 90 days, and are now paying over $600 Billion dollars a year just to service THE INTEREST ON THE DEBT. It is unsustainable. We won’t tax our way out of it.

But we have to address it or we will cease to be as a nation. And that is not hyperbole.

Leftists like to use the word “existential” to describe everything as a threat from little old ladies praying outside abortion clinics to the orange-haired Donald Trump, proving daily that they have no idea what the word “existential” means.

Being $37 Trillion in debt, increasing our debt by $1 Trillion dollars every 90 days, and paying over $600 Billion dollars a year just to service THE INTEREST ON THE DEBT IS by any rational standard, a real “existential” threat. And we better face it.

Our facing it puts pressure on the Communists by putting them in a position to be threatened by their own citizenry, and one way they may address it is by mercilessly crushing their own citizens who dissent, which would be a terrible thing for Chinese.

But worse, for the world, is that Communist China may propagandize its population to engage in actual warfare to combat people like us Americans who are defending our liberty by fighting back the tyrannical, unethical, and calculated “business practices” mandated by the Communist Chinese government, and thereby drag the entire world into armed conflict.

Lest anyone think I am being a shallow shill by saying that invoking tariffs is “defending our liberty”, remember this:

Economic Liberty and Personal Liberty are inextricably intertwined. You cannot have Economic Liberty without Personal Liberty.

And you cannot have Personal Liberty without Economic Liberty.

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