Jan 21, 2025 09:42 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 21, 2025 09:54 PM by C C.)
PETER ZEIHAN
https://youtu.be/kI5onbXSByc
VIDEO EXCERPTS: First things first, let’s review what it is that the Chinese are dealing with. Before we talk about how Trump plugs into that...
[...] Enter Donald Trump. Donald Trump is singularly obsessed with the trade deficit, which is probably not the best way to look at the issue. But that’s how he sees it...
[...] For the most part, the Chinese, especially at the top, are not worried about this because they’ve dealt with him before. They see him as an eminently lateral person. And so they basically give way in negotiations, knowing that the day after the negotiations close, that there will be no enforcement and they never have to worry about him again.
Why do they feel this way? They’ve already done it before. The phase one trade deal [...] seven, six years ago, committed the Chinese to buying X number of dollars of various products... But by the end of the Trump term, China hadn’t met any of the criteria at all.
In fact, they never intended to. [...] So actually, we saw the trade deficit in a structural sense, go up because of trade talks with the Trump administration. The other reason that the Chinese are really not concerned about Trump is that they don’t take him seriously as a strategic thinker.
The Chinese understand, as everyone in Asia understands, that if you want to hem in China, you can’t do it alone. It can’t be just a trade. You can’t just be a strategic issue. It has to be holistic. You have to bring in all the other countries...
[...] And if you don’t do that, the Chinese will easily find a weak link in the chain and be able to push out. And they see Donald Trump as being more danger to the alliance than they are now, whether or not that is accurate enough of that. That’s how they see things. And again, they’ve done this before with Trump the first time around.
They don’t see anything different in round two except the Donald Trump is trying to wreck, law enforcement and the Defense Department and, the intelligence agencies with his appointees, which are the things that generally keep China in check as well [...] you need everyone working together.
And they see Donald Trump as the best possible candidate for wrecking that capacity within the American system. So they’re actually broadly looking forward to Trump 2.0, because they think they’re going to be able to get even more out of the United States than they did under Trump 1.0, much like the Russians are feeling. And like the Russians, I think they’re miscalculating.
This is not 2017. We are in a very different world now. And the single biggest difference on the Chinese front is that Donald Trump did succeed in changing the conversation in the United States, and there is now a competition among all factions in Congress about who can be the most anti-Chinese. Now, translating that sentiment and policy, that’s a lot easier said than done.
But there’s no longer this core disagreement within the parties because the business community has been ejected from the Republican coalition. So the faction that used to be the most organized and calling the shots in the Republican Party on economic policy is no longer even part of the conversation [...] no one else is as concerned with economic stability as the business community was.
So we’ve already seen in the last five years a significant outflow of investment from China, foreign firms and even of Chinese firms as everyone tries to get away from this country. That is facing economic implosion because of its demographic issues. And while Donald Trump certainly isn’t the guy to build a broad coalition within his own government, much less across multiple governments, to have any sort of coherent policy towards China, the dude does know how to do tariffs.
And that is certainly something that’s going to hit the Chinese on the head. Now, as a rule, I would say tariffs are a really bad tool for shaping policy...
[...] But what I do know for sure is that if we do get into a situation where Trump basically waltzes into East Asia with a sledgehammer, yes, the U.S. is going to take a lot of hits.
Yes, it’s going to hurt. Yes, he will go down in history as triggering the highest inflation the United States has ever had. Yes, it will be ugly, but there won’t be a China on the other side of that.
[...] If the goal is simply to smash China and move on, I have no doubt that Trump can do that. If the goal is to smash China, move on, and have America in a much better place domestically. That requires a skill set that I have not seen Donald Trump wield just yet...
Trump 2.0 - China ... https://youtu.be/kI5onbXSByc
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/kI5onbXSByc
https://youtu.be/kI5onbXSByc
VIDEO EXCERPTS: First things first, let’s review what it is that the Chinese are dealing with. Before we talk about how Trump plugs into that...
[...] Enter Donald Trump. Donald Trump is singularly obsessed with the trade deficit, which is probably not the best way to look at the issue. But that’s how he sees it...
[...] For the most part, the Chinese, especially at the top, are not worried about this because they’ve dealt with him before. They see him as an eminently lateral person. And so they basically give way in negotiations, knowing that the day after the negotiations close, that there will be no enforcement and they never have to worry about him again.
Why do they feel this way? They’ve already done it before. The phase one trade deal [...] seven, six years ago, committed the Chinese to buying X number of dollars of various products... But by the end of the Trump term, China hadn’t met any of the criteria at all.
In fact, they never intended to. [...] So actually, we saw the trade deficit in a structural sense, go up because of trade talks with the Trump administration. The other reason that the Chinese are really not concerned about Trump is that they don’t take him seriously as a strategic thinker.
The Chinese understand, as everyone in Asia understands, that if you want to hem in China, you can’t do it alone. It can’t be just a trade. You can’t just be a strategic issue. It has to be holistic. You have to bring in all the other countries...
[...] And if you don’t do that, the Chinese will easily find a weak link in the chain and be able to push out. And they see Donald Trump as being more danger to the alliance than they are now, whether or not that is accurate enough of that. That’s how they see things. And again, they’ve done this before with Trump the first time around.
They don’t see anything different in round two except the Donald Trump is trying to wreck, law enforcement and the Defense Department and, the intelligence agencies with his appointees, which are the things that generally keep China in check as well [...] you need everyone working together.
And they see Donald Trump as the best possible candidate for wrecking that capacity within the American system. So they’re actually broadly looking forward to Trump 2.0, because they think they’re going to be able to get even more out of the United States than they did under Trump 1.0, much like the Russians are feeling. And like the Russians, I think they’re miscalculating.
This is not 2017. We are in a very different world now. And the single biggest difference on the Chinese front is that Donald Trump did succeed in changing the conversation in the United States, and there is now a competition among all factions in Congress about who can be the most anti-Chinese. Now, translating that sentiment and policy, that’s a lot easier said than done.
But there’s no longer this core disagreement within the parties because the business community has been ejected from the Republican coalition. So the faction that used to be the most organized and calling the shots in the Republican Party on economic policy is no longer even part of the conversation [...] no one else is as concerned with economic stability as the business community was.
So we’ve already seen in the last five years a significant outflow of investment from China, foreign firms and even of Chinese firms as everyone tries to get away from this country. That is facing economic implosion because of its demographic issues. And while Donald Trump certainly isn’t the guy to build a broad coalition within his own government, much less across multiple governments, to have any sort of coherent policy towards China, the dude does know how to do tariffs.
And that is certainly something that’s going to hit the Chinese on the head. Now, as a rule, I would say tariffs are a really bad tool for shaping policy...
[...] But what I do know for sure is that if we do get into a situation where Trump basically waltzes into East Asia with a sledgehammer, yes, the U.S. is going to take a lot of hits.
Yes, it’s going to hurt. Yes, he will go down in history as triggering the highest inflation the United States has ever had. Yes, it will be ugly, but there won’t be a China on the other side of that.
[...] If the goal is simply to smash China and move on, I have no doubt that Trump can do that. If the goal is to smash China, move on, and have America in a much better place domestically. That requires a skill set that I have not seen Donald Trump wield just yet...
Trump 2.0 - China ... https://youtu.be/kI5onbXSByc
