Us vs China: A Critical Threshold Has Just Been Crossed, and Things Will Never Be the Same Again…
Forget trade war. Get ready for Cold War 2.0 only this time with devastating economic implications
Just when things seemed to be settling down a little bit, our conflict with China has suddenly escalated to a dangerous new phase. This is not simply just a “trade war” any longer, and our relationship with China will never be the same again.
As you will see below, President Trump just referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as our “enemy”, and this is something that the Chinese are going to take extremely seriously. In China, the national leader is a representation of the government as a whole, and the government as a whole is a representation of the entire county. So to the Chinese people, what Trump just said will be interpreted as “the United States and China are now enemies”.
Of course for Trump everything would be forgiven tomorrow if the Chinese totally caved in to his demands and started saying all sorts of nice things about him, but for the Chinese what has transpired in recent months will be remembered for generations.
President Trump has insulted their national honor over and over again, and that sort of thing may not mean much to us here in the western world anymore, but over in China their sense of honor is central to who they are as a people. After everything that has already been said and done, there will be no going back, and we are now facing a future in which the United States and China will be very bitter enemies.
In response to previously announced U.S. tariffs, China stunned global markets when it announced a new wave of tariffs on U.S. goods early on Friday…
The trade war between the U.S. and China escalated further Friday as Beijing announced a new set of tariffs on American products, sending the stock market plunging.
The China State Council announced it would impose tariffs ranging from 5% to 10% on an additional $75 billion in U.S. goods, according to state media outlet Global Times.
After Trump learned of this, he hit the ceiling, and he immediately went on a Twitter rant in which he pledged to hit Chinese goods with even higher tariffs…
For many years China (and many other countries) has been taking advantage of the United States on Trade, Intellectual Property Theft, and much more. Our Country has been losing HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year to China, with no end in sight….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
….Sadly, past Administrations have allowed China to get so far ahead of Fair and Balanced Trade that it has become a great burden to the American Taxpayer. As President, I can no longer allow this to happen! In the spirit of achieving Fair Trade, we must Balance this very….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
…Additionally, the remaining 300 BILLION DOLLARS of goods and products from China, that was being taxed from September 1st at 10%, will now be taxed at 15%. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
In addition, Trump “hereby ordered” U.S. corporations “to immediately start looking for an alternative to China”…
Trump then tweeted that American companies “are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” He did not immediately detail the authority he thought he could use to compel firms to leave China.
Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
….better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
….all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!). Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop – it didn’t. Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2 1/2 years, is MUCH larger than that of China. We will keep it that way!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
When I first saw that I could hardly believe what I was seeing, and you may have had the same reaction.
Can Trump actually do that?
Well, no, the truth is that he can’t.
He can certainly encourage U.S. businesses to leave China, but as CNN has pointed out, he doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally order all of our companies to leave an entire country…
Here’s the thing: Donald Trump can’t order American business to do anything. There’s a reason the business world is known as the “private sector” — because it’s not owned or controlled by the government (aka the “public sector.”) We don’t have state-run industry (or media). The President of the United States can’t “order” privately held business to do, well, much of anything.
And on top of everything else, President Trump posted another tweet in which he called Chinese President Xi Jinping our “enemy”. The following comes directly from Trump’s Twitter account…
As usual, the Fed did NOTHING! It is incredible that they can “speak” without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly. We have a very strong dollar and a very weak Fed. I will work “brilliantly” with both, and the U.S. will do great…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
….My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019
Any hopes for a trade deal with China during the Trump administration were already dead, but this has put even more nails in the coffin.
When the outlook for the U.S. economy was brighter, getting a trade deal with China done was not so critical for Trump, but now things have dramatically changed.
At this point, even the White House’s own internal forecasts are showing “that the economy could slow markedly over the next year”…
Top White House advisers notified President Trump earlier this month that some internal forecasts showed that the economy could slow markedly over the next year, stopping short of a recession but complicating his path to reelection in 2020.
The private forecast, one of several delivered to Trump and described by three people familiar with the briefing, contrasts sharply with the triumphant rhetoric the president and his surrogates have repeatedly used to describe the economy.
Things just continue to get even bleaker. U.S. manufacturing just contracted for the very first time since 2009, and the financial markets are starting to figure out that there aren’t any promising solutions on the horizon.
On Friday, the trade war turmoil greatly spooked investors and the Dow ended the day down more than 600 points…
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 623.34 points lower, or 2.4% at 25,628.90. The S&P 500 slid 2.6% to close at 2,847.11. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 3% to end the day at 7,751.77. The losses brought the Dow’s decline for August to more than 4%.
The major indexes also posted weekly losses for the fourth straight time. The Dow dropped about 1% this week while the S&P 500 pulled back 1.4%. The Nasdaq lost 1.8%.
As I noted at the end of last month, the stock market started to decline in July, and now it has fallen every single week here in August. Just like in “The Beginning Of The End”, we are potentially facing a scenario in which we experience great economic and financial turmoil during the second half of the year.
Over and over again, I have kept warning my readers that our relations with China were going to get progressively worse. We have been expecting this for a long time, but most Americans still do not grasp the implications of this crisis.
This conflict between the United States and China is going to change everything. An extraordinary amount of pain is heading our way, and our society is completely and utterly unprepared to handle it.
Source: The Economic Collapse
Trump has shot himself in the foot so long that he would be the Toulouse Lautrec of politics. LOL.
alternative for CN?
where?
VN has shown that this is easier said than done.
the u.s. as a mfg. base? forget it. it has been gutted years ago.
it’s not going to be a cold war by any means. the u.s has already lost that.
there is no catching up because the u.s. is too far behind. even Yemen is knocking its assets out of the sky. it’s buying khazarian “iron dome” systems, chinese equipment, russian rockets.
rewind and start all over again?
i doubt it.
too much has already been undone.
new trade deals with other lands won’t be revoked.
pistols at ten paces?
childish.
with this man’s instability, he may decide that a hot war is the answer.
is the world ready for that?
How come we are seeing 5 or 6 or more of these CNR trains loaded with China stuff every day coming through here? We live on the mainline CNR tracks in northern British Columbia. These tracks go directly from Prince Rupert to interior BC to Edmonton and beyond all coming from China. This garbage can then be sent south to exceptionalistan. These trains are more then a mile long each time and there are many of them every day of the week. Thousands of containers are being sent in here day after day. When is this going to stop? These trains go directly to amazon warehouses.
All of this is ridiculous and easily prevented.
First, the average man or woman in either China or America don’t want a trade war.
All it means, is of the little bit of currency they have left from their labor, after both “governments” Get through, the “government’ is getting ready to take more.
As neither peoples want any type of war between their peoples, but the elites do, let the elites do the fighting and dying for a change.
USA/China, Heads of States.
Pistols, 10 places each.
Turn.
Fire!
Wars over.
This is an elites game they play to control and steal from humanity.
Humanity needs to out grow this, reinstall Common Law Courts, clean up this mess, but duels between quarreling Heads of States is a good start.
Don’t want to fight a duel if called to?
Go flip burgers at Micky D’s, and leave the business of running things to real men.
Trump and US rhetoric are alarmingly naive.. First the US gets Chinese and other imports for free by exchanging worthless US currency for hard goods that enrich America and Americans. Secondly, it’s not Chinese industry that principally fuels the trade imbalance it’s US Corporations producing things in China like computers, appliances, Nike shoes and much more and exporting that to the US.
Longer term it’s possible Trump and Neo-Con Washington may be successful in disengaging the US economy and production from China (and Russia).. this would be a requirement to making preemptive (nuclear) strikes on those countries.
Ominous.
So much for freedom and democracy.
The US President, has ordered private companies to leave China!
What happened to separation of powers and the free market?
We should be defending state sovereignty and national identity, not globalization – which essentially transferred the U.S. economy to China.
You (and the author) ironically seem to think transnational privatization is the economic equivalent of freedom and democracy. Only in a world that dissolves state sovereignty and places the individual and business interests above the state or nation.
This is what all you modern capitalists do. Your hatred of socialism blinds you to the systemic weakness of capitalism and causes you to embrace this extreme model of “economic freedom” that places corporations above the state and national identity, thus resulting in the erosion and dissolution of the nation. You might as well be an apologist for central banking, usury, and the Federal Reserve.
Talking to yourself, or what.
The US says it is all about freedom and democracy, the free market is good for personal freedoms.
Just pointing out the hypocrisy of free market enthusiasts.
You saw hatred in my 3 sentence quip?
Paranoia is bad for your health.
“Just pointing out the hypocrisy of free market enthusiasts.”
That wasn’t obvious from your remarks. It wasn’t clear whether you were merely pointing out a contradiction in U.S. policy, or actually complaining about Trump’s threat being tantamount to an attack on freedom.
Just sayin’, dude. Carry on.
While you clearly took the opinion that I hate socialism?
That is obvious, as you stated so.
I suppose it makes a change from being called Russian or Bolshie that I usually get.