China’s New Strategy: Outlast Donald Trump [headline]
Hardly a new strategy. This strategy has been apparent for quite some time. On July 14 I wrote this reply:
China has other very significant considerations on its plate. It is in a make or break war with the United States to become the world’s dominant economic and military power. Trump has directly confronted that ambition and threatens to derail it. In breaking off trade negotiations and reneging on its agreements, China has concluded that it must prevail over Trump if it is to realize its ambitions. It might be thinking that it need not prevail over the United States, merely temporize until the 2020 election or until internal domestic pressure to withdraw tariffs becomes too great for Trump to withstand.
On August 6, I wrote this which anticipates very neatly the article leading this thread:
The real questions are, what is China doing and why?
China's obviously buying market share, or, more accurately, protecting market share to compensate for the tariffs with lower prices. Why is China doing this? I believe it is motivated by more than the obvious need to hold onto its market share in exports, it is a signal that China is not going to come to an agreement before 2020.
I think it tells us that China believes that its downside risks of inflation and loss of reserves can be managed very easily in this command economy, at least until 2020. It tells us that China is keeping its factories open by reducing prices so that civil unrest-the biggest chronic fear of China's elite-can be managed, at least in the short term.
Most importantly, this move tells us that China is not in this game as a game but as a existential war. I think they know they can survive very well until 2020 and if Trump is reelected they can go on until 2024.
We must understand that China regards this not as a trade war but as and existential war for survival. They are fully committed, we have Democrats and rinos.
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A month or so ago I wrote another reply saying in effect that this election will turn on trivial issues but history will write that the election decided whether America would survive or succumb to the existential threat to its survival mounted by China.
At the time of these year old replies the extent of Joe Biden's venal corruption with China was not so clearly established and certainly not generally known by the electorate. Alas, they remain so through the election.
One such reply concluding with the admonition, "it's China, stupid!"
