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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   36629 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I noticed there is a slow drible of talk about some of Trumps Executive Orders. I kinda wanted to talk about all of them as a package, and some of them more specifically. I would advise everyone to just go ahead and read all of the executive orders (there are about 50):

https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/

They are generally short, about a page long. The titles are descriptive of the goals, so you can even skip reading many of them. And you don't need to hear about them via a second hand source.

I got the general gist of all of them within an hour or two on Inauguration day (when they were posted).

My general impressions:

  1. I like the visibility and ease of reading these. Its nothing like most legislation that goes through congress that often require a law degree, and an in depth knowledge of regulations just to sort of understand them.
  2. I don't like this continuing tradition of using executive orders to run the government. From what I remember this started in earnest under Bush 2. But its also pretty clear that congress is increasingly non-functional and uninterested in their assigned role in the constitution. Congress has delegated away its power for almost 100 years at this point, granting law-making powers to bureaucracies that are run under the executive branch. So I don't like the executive order - ocracy, but it seems there is no alternative.
  3. I care less about the culture war type orders, like renaming things. I think it is probably good to have them in there from a strategy perspective. Let your enemies exhaust themselves on silly issues.
  4. My favorite Executive order: Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce. Basically people in the bureaucracy are supposed to carry out the will and directive of the president / executive branch. If they sandbag or fail to do this, then that is grounds for dismissal. They don't have to agree with the president or be loyal, but none of this "resist" stuff. It was a little ridiculous that this EO needed to be issued in the first place.
  5. The one that I think will actually personally impact me the most: Return to In-Person Work. I live close enough to DC. Traffic is going to get worse.
  6. Two executive orders have me worried. One is about cost of living: Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis. The actual text mostly talks about getting rid of barriers and harmful regulations. I hope that is where it stops. But populist politicians have often resorted to price controls to "fight" inflation. I strongly hope they avoid that pitfall.
  7. The other EO that worries me is related to trade America First Trade Policy. The basic economics case against tariffs seems air tight to me. Tariffs seem like a classic policy failure to me. The costs are distributed among all US consumers, but the benefits are often concentrated within certain sectors, or even specific companies. I was also hoping to see an end to the Jones Act, but this EO seems like it thinks that legislation is great.

The basic economics case against tariffs seems air tight to me.

Me, too, but I still prefer tariffs.

What about the complicated economics case?

Other countries need the American market more than Americans need foreign production. Or, that should be the case if it is not already.

What about the sovereignty case?

Across the border is a foreign land with foreign people and foreign laws. Some goods can come across the border, but in a country as big as the USA, there is nothing that must be acquired abroad.

What about the warfighting case?

DJI drones will kill so many people this century, of that I'm sure. What happens when your geopolitical rival is the one supplying all of your military?

What about anything other than simply maximizing currency?

I'm talking again about self-sufficiency. America should be self-sufficient both because it is virtuous and because it better ensures her long-term safety.

I haven't even gotten to the real reason I prefer tariffs: how else are you funding the government? Right now, it's income taxes, which is taking resources away from the most productive people in order to reallocate them. I suggest that it is not the most productive people that we should be taxing. Trump has floated getting rid of the income tax, and if he replaces it with tariffs then I'll faint with joy.

What is the basic economic case for confiscating 25% or more from every person in the country?

how else are you funding the government?

A tax on the unimproved value of land, obviously.

I don't like perpetual taxes. At least with income tax, you're only taxed when you make the money, not every year thereafter. Of course, they tax you ten different ways on that money that's already been taxed, but at least the income tax concerns a particular event in time, not simple a particular area in space.

As far as I know every state levies a property tax, so the "perpetual tax" ship has sailed.

And everyone hates it. We don't live in a perfect tyranny, you need popular buy in- and property taxes high enough to fund the government(as opposed to some corrupt school construction projects) won't have them.

To reiterate the basic case:

Specialization and trade is the engine of ALL economic growth. There is a theoretical maximum point for any economy where everyone is as specialized as possible and trading away for everything else they want. International trade extends this theoretical maximum point. We might already be living beyond the point of maximum wealth if the US was only going to trade with itself.

I'm not entirely sure what point is being made for the "complicated economic case" or the "sovereignty case".

And how much are you willing to pay in average cost of living for these things? Should we be 20% poorer, 50% poorer, 90% poorer to support these things? Or is anything shy of 100% poorer acceptable? And like most economic issues its not just a one time payment, its an ongoing payment. So even being 2% poorer a year means that in about 30 years you are 50% poorer than you would have been.

Tariffs supported government revenue back in the day when alcohol taxes were enough to be about 25% of government revenue. I would love if goverment was that small. Tariffs are currently a rounding error as a revenue source. And I don't think there is a realistic way to get that number high enough.

I don't like this continuing tradition of using executive orders to run the government. From what I remember this started in earnest under Bush 2.

It absolutely did. I'll put it this way, I'm preparing my soapbox and case for my next lefty-friend gathering around precisely this. You have to be a numbskull of the highest order to look at these Day 0 edicts - many of them simple see-saws of EOs from the last administration, which were the same of the n-2, which were the same of n-3... to be unable to recognize how ridiculous this all is.

Many of these leftists work in the military industrial complex. They are simultaneously bemoaning this election and shitposting virtue signaling crud, but will have now spent the majority of their careers building muder machines for republican presidents.

I will be begging these people to think about the next election, or perhaps reflecting on how previous ones have led to this. I don't expect success, but at least appreciate the vibe shift may at least allow some sort of basic conversation.

In the classic tradition of riffing off the least important part of your post.

The one that I think will actually personally impact me the most: Return to In-Person Work. I live close enough to DC. Traffic is going to get worse.

I wonder. I haven't noticed much of an increase in traffic in Seattle since Amazon and other companies went return to office five days a week. When people are in the office working, they AREN'T on the roads doing other things. In the end, it balances out. Traffic in certain areas will get worse, others better.

Yes, in this model, the work-for-homers weren't actually working much of the time. I think this was true of Amazon and especially true of federal employees.

How do they get away with just not working? Does Amazon not track every click you make on a work computer?

Yes, in this model, the work-for-homers weren't actually working much of the time. I think this was true of Amazon and especially true of federal employees.

Anecdotally, this seems true- work from home types were running errands, socializing, just generally doing stuff, rather than actually working.

is there a name for the idea that when political parties try things against their usual tendency it isn't as dangerous because they aren't under the same pressure to hide results and double down?

i agree with you that price controls are not a good intervention but i don't fear republican price controls the same way i do democrat instituted ones, because i believe there are plenty of powerful republican constituencies that can get them removed when bad results happen

"Only Nixon can go to China" is adjacent to what you're asking, but not quite.

Price controls were pretty bad in the 70s under Nixon.

They also aren't under any pressure to change or fix the things if they are bad.

If the Democrats did some kind of immigration restriction that ended up screwing immigrants over I doubt the Republicans would be clamoring at them to fix it.

The one that I think will actually personally impact me the most: Return to In-Person Work.

Me too but for a different reason. They're basically firing me. I work for the military but live in a deeply red and Trumpian state rather than DC. I'm close to some of the companies we contract with to build our stuff and I'm the point man going into their facilities and working with them. If I can even keep the same job, we'll just have to live in DC and I'll fly here and work here not quite constantly but a whole bunch. A good chunk of my life will be separated from my family.

My wife makes more money than me because private sector over government but I was willing to try to help our military. We can't make her quit her job and try to survive DC cost of living on my salary alone. I don't want to uproot everything and move away from family. I don't want to leave Trump country for the cess pool. I can't imagine having to send our kids to DC schools.

I hear @jeroboam saying:

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

Would he tell me, "If only Stalin Trump knew..."? He's forcing Reds to either subject themselves to local Blue rule or quit his government. Purging his own allies. There's so much to like about him taking control back. I saw that he's getting rid of DEI, affirmative action, Schedule F'ing the resistance, and even detransing the active duty. Makes me want to stay and help. But I just can't see doing it. I can't send my kids to DC schools.

Bluntly, I didn't consider this downside. I still think the inevitable dilution of entitled incompetents may be worth it.... but I can see this changing the algebra there.

I think it's much more likely to increase the concentration of incompetent workers. WFH or hybrid schedules are going to be worth tens of thousands of dollars a year to your typical professional type. This is effectively being told you're all taking a huge pay cut and the only people either publicly or privately who would endure such a thing are the ones who don't think they can do better in the private sector or they are in their position for non-monetary reasons like ideology.

Blanket RTO orders are great for temporarily juicing stock at a company but they are cutting labor costs by removing your most competitive workers.

This is fun to think about, but while this only applies to software engineering, the gist of the most recent and comprehensive study I've seen is that:

  • WFH orgs have the most top tier talent (> 1x engineers) but far more "ghost engineers" (<.1x)
  • On the balance, WFH orgs have less overall output

We'll see how it pans out, but if any industry is ripe for WFH fraud it absolutely has to be the government.

The crux of such a study would be in how you're defining output or productivity. Is that lines of code and is more lines good? What is the equivalent in other fields, how is it being measured, etc.

The twitter thread shows the methodology. Please actually read it.

It's my industry, so I think it's as good as it can reasonably be.

Twitter is so useless these days. Why lock threads behind an account?

It's my industry, so I think it's as good as it can reasonably be.

How well do you think it translates to other jobs?

Sorry, I did not consider that you didn't have an account. I personally think it's worth having one to lurk. It's still a great source of info.

Here's the image describing it but to summarize, the methodology uses an AI model trained by experts about "meaningful" commits. In other words, not Lines of Code, which I agree is an imperfect metric at best.

How well do you think it translates to other jobs?

Probably well, on the balance. First, it's probably the profession best positioned to be analyzed in terms of measuring output. Second, if any job can be effectively executed in a WFH context, it has to be software. There's no other industry with more capabilities to deliver value remotely. This is probably the absolute best case for WFH advocacy. Even the sub-disciplines near software engineering like product ownership are even more hilariously ripe for grift.

As I mentioned in another comment, I am a big WFH advocate. It's made my life measurably better, and the company I work for deals with its benefits and drawbacks very well.

But I think most places are not, and very few (no?) frontline workers are interested in being honest about the downsides.

It might not be as bad as the study suggests -- working from home might turn those -1x engineers (who would be measured as "productive") into 0.1x engineers.

That would make the study's conclusions even "worse" in terms of proving that WFH is bad for most software shops.

It's pretty intuitive and not that complicated. The best engineers have an enormous amount of leverage. They can demand the best and most flexible jobs, and can be so effective in less time that they can take the most advantage of WFH while still providing high value.

The grifters who benefit from low accountability will also gravitate to those positions.

I work for a high-performing organization that is extremely WFH friendly. We have many elite engineers and have built our culture around it. Even so, we have to fire grifters every once in a while.

No crypto reserve, or any plan at all or mention of it. I predict it won't happen. This is setting up to be a major disappointment. The one thing a lot of donors expected or hoped for is absent.

Why do the donors want a crypto reserve? Just because it boosts the price of BTC? Or does that strategic reserve actually serve their interests in some other way?

both. obviously it would be good for the price

Why would it serve their interests besides boosting the price?

Obviously it will boost the price, and so any holders now stand to gain. What about a crypto reserve is good for the rest of the country? Or is there a non-personal-gain motivation for just these donors that doesn't apply to Joe Blow that justifies it?

The economic case for a Bitcoin reserve is weak and stands to benefit a small minority of donors, more than improve general economic welfare. This is probably why Trump is dragging his feet on it or a low priority compared to other things.

Maybe this should go to the pardon thread, or even get it's own top level post, but I'm not summarizing the entirety of the drama.

In any case Ross Ulbricht is free and Trump is now the greatest president who has ever lived*. Blackpillers in disarray.

*) Ok sorry, not quite, there's still Snowden to take care of, and I don't know if there's anything that can be done for Assange, other than an official apology.

Maybe this should go to the pardon thread, or even get it's own top level post, but I'm not summarizing the entirety of the drama.

In any case Ross Ulbricht is free and Trump is now the greatest president who has ever lived*.

This might also belong in a similar location, but I'm replying here.

Sure, Ulbricht may have been pardoned… but has he actually been physically released from jail yet? Even more, have any of the J6 pardonees?

Because, AIUI, getting released from Federal incarceration is not a simple or quick process. There's a bunch of paperwork, and protocols, and procedures, all of which determined bureaucrats can slow-walk to great effect. Sure, keeping someone locked up after they've been pardoned probably falls under "false imprisonment," but that's something you have to take to court — which takes time, and can be dragged out — and even if the court finds in favor, compliance with the resulting court order can also be dragged out.

I mean, maybe if Trump were to send agents to physically see to the pardonees' release — they'd have to be US Marshals, I'd figure — even then, I'd imagine the warden and guards and such would protest that this is against procedure, and that the Marshals have to leave and not come back until all the paperwork is in order…

Have to admit that freeing Ulbricht was based. Wasn't expecting this to actually happen (thought it was just another empty promise by the king of empty promises).

He publicly announced he would pardon Ulbricht as a favor to the libertarians months ago when they endorsed him.

Since you linked to me, and like I said, when Trump successfully deports a mere 25% of the illegal immigrant population (say 3.2 million people, and long-term settled in the US too, not border pushbacks) I’ll cease the blackpilling. Some things are easy, others are hard. It’s the difficult things that are most important.

I would also stop it if SCOTUS abolishes birthright citizenship, but I am very doubtful.

Since you linked to me, and like I said, when Trump successfully deports a mere 25% of the illegal immigrant population (say 3.2 million people, and long-term settled in the US too, not border pushbacks) I’ll cease the blackpilling

Would you settle for negative immigration for a period of years? I see the combination of these three things causing this outcome.

  1. Arrest and deport the criminals

  2. Encourage self-deportation. Crackdown on businesses who hire illegals. End federal services that give benefits to illegals.

  3. Discourage immigration. You can probably mark this one as mission accomplished. The worst thing Biden did was use rhetoric to encourage people to immigrate to the U.S. Probably 50% of the Biden wave could have been avoided if he didn't wave the welcome flag. Trump's rhetoric tells people to stay away.

I would also stop it if SCOTUS abolishes birthright citizenship, but I am very doubtful.

That is one of the EOs. Whether it works is I guess another thing.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/

Yes, that’s what I mean.

Some judge in Hawaii is bound to zap it.

And then it goes to the supreme court ...

The Supreme Court will surely rule to uphold birthright citizenship, right?

Regardless of what the intent of the 14th amendment was, the language seems pretty clear to me. And, despite what liberals might think, the current court isn't just a conservative version of the Warren-era clownshow. They seem pretty reasonable for the most part and often reach a bipartisan consensus.

The Supreme Court will surely rule to uphold birthright citizenship, right?

Oh, certainly. But then, there's the question of whether Jim might be right when he says things like:

Doubtless the left will say of the order ending birthright citizenship “Hey, Civics 101, an executive order must have a basis in existing law or the constitution. You cannot change the constitution by executive order” That is normality bias. We have not had laws nor a constitution for a long time. There will be a supreme court case over birthright censorship, but it will matter as much as the Queen arriving in a stagecoach to open Parliament matters.

and:

It is normality bias to think that the upcoming Supreme court case on anchor babies matters. Whether these executive orders have actual effect is going to be resolved in a different way.

Augustus Caesar had military victory and death squads, and it still took him twelve years to get the Roman government in order. Trump has none of those, but he has made an impressive start.

We have long said that America’s problems are coup complete. When Trump was president, but not in power, and the presidency was in power, we often said that Trump should perform an autogolpe against the presidency. Trump has issued a pile of executive orders against the presidency, which look very like an autogolpe. That the border orders and the hostage rescue took effect makes it likely that the autogolpe will take effect. But, on the other hand, even after sending most of the long parliament home, Cromwell found it heavy going, and so did Augustus Caesar.

If Trump’s decrees subjecting the presidency to the president stick, all his decrees will stick, including constitutional amendment by presidential decree. If they do not, none of them will stick. I am still keeping my head down because I do not want to be J6ed.

I think the question is “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” appears to be surplusage if it simply means anyone born in the US. So what does it mean apart from simply being borne in the US

I mean, do you think this part is clear?

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States

Because the Supreme Court already neutered that part beyond recognition. Gutting the sentence immediately prior wouldn't even be novel ground.

Trump will probably get rid of the most criminal illegals, which is something at least. I’m doubting he’s going to make a huge dent in the overall population of them.

I predict far fewer deportations than expected. Same as in 2017 when everyone overestimated what Trump would do vs. what he was actually capable of doing ,which was not that much. Also, Elon and others in his inner circle are strongly pro-immigration.

I predict far fewer deportations than expected.

I think if he's actually successful, it will look more like voluntary self-deportation in the modal case rather than ICE. Making it harder for unauthorized immigrants to work and support themselves comfortably in the US makes deciding to go home easier. I have no inside knowledge here, but one could imagine this looks like more E-Verify requirements, getting serious about issuing and tracking temporary agricultural work visas, amnesty for self-departures, and possibly leveraging international relations to improve the economics of the countries in question -- direct aid sounds like something far-left, but throwing weight behind the Bukele, Milei, and similar leaders sounds very Trump to me.

I don't think Elon gives a shit about migrants crossing the border or deporting illegals.

The split over immigration that ended with Vivek exiled for criticizing American icon Ferris Bueller began over legal, skill-based migration.

Most of the party is already aligned on the illegal bit.

Elon wants the 3LA to stop fucking with him. He wants to build cars and go to space and not have bureaucrats yanking his chain because they can, and because they hate him.

Because of this, I have no faith in Musk on anything related to immigration. Especially legal immigration, which of course can become illegal immigration or stopped entirely with the stroke of a pen.

Dems need to ralize they have a very effective wedge against the GOP if they can just focus their efforts on supporting and increasing high skill immigration which pretty much every analysis finds are massively positive in expectation rather than presenting a weak flank through their advocacy for illegals crossing the border. "Shut down the border and quadruple the amount of legal migrants" is a winning formula, Dems just need to run with it.

How high skill are we talking here?

Because Canada's "skilled" immigration has been an unmitigated disaster. Housing prices have skyrocketed, community relations are trashed, and the economy has been in a per-capita recession for 2 years now.

We need actually skilled labor and not whatever the system gamers are doing to get into Canada and Australia. Simply quadrupling legal immigration without a better system is not where we want to be.

The sort of skills you'd expect from people who are IQ 120+ on average. Lower than that and they'll be made obsolete by AI well before their expected end of working life and now you're just stuck with them and their descendants forever.

You're not quadrupling the US immigration intake with 120+ IQ types. You're not getting that average even with current numbers. Family reunification alone will drop it too low.

In practice you're just going to have the H1B debate all over again

The only reason Democrats wanted immigration was that they thought that the people coming in would vote straight Democrat when they or their children became citizens. The last two election cycles have cast serious doubt on that plan. I’m not sure the Democrats themselves are going to be as bullish on mass immigration going forward.

I doubt this is all that effective of a wedge. It generates online buzz, but at the end of the day, there isn't a large constituency that's willing to go to the mat over work visas. I'm on the side that's very skeptical of importing Indian software developers as a net positive for the United States, but it's just not worth infighting over when getting rid of fake "asylum seekers" is correct, popular, and will take all of the resources currently available.

Eh, most Americans support more legal immigration from the decent and half decent parts of Latin America(places like Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic) and from Europe, but it’s not a top issue for anyone. India/Middle East/Africa might be slightly unpopular, but it’s definitely not something anyone would stake a campaign on.

Tier 2: Close allies – Exports of advanced chips to entities in certain allied countries will be eligible for a license exception, unless the entity or its ultimate parent is headquartered outside of one of the allied countries (other than the United States). The allied countries are: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

They can already identify exactly which sort of countries we should be trusting. Why can't they do the same with people?

To be clear, I am suggesting that US citizenship be limited to immigrants from the countries listed above. Other immigrants should be few and far between, and should seldom be eligible for citizenship.

Why should we lock down immigration from e.g. Hungary? We've benefited quite a lot from them in the past.

Yeah, the number of Democrats who will say "more immigration from Europe, less from India" rounds to zero. And importing massive amounts of Indians is campaign loser.

He publicly announced he would pardon Ulbricht as a favor to the libertarians months ago when they endorsed him.

I don't follow the libertarian movement as closely as I used to, but my impression was that about half of them insisted it would never happen. Same thing happened with a faction of the TERFs, who insisted he will not do anything on the trans issue.

Since you linked to me, and like I said, when Trump successfully deports a mere 25% of the illegal immigrant population

From what everyone is saying, deportations are very much on the menu. Whether they'll crack the number you demand remains to be seen, but "don't @ me until we hit 25%" is quite a take.

Right now it appears that they’re doing limited raids targeting big illegal populations and will prioritize criminals. The infrastructure doesn’t exist to detain, let alone deport millions and there seems to be no plan to build it.

I agree. I think the plan is to conduct a few high-profile immigration raids in places with a lot of journalists and Blue activists so that the resulting wailing and gnashing of teeth makes Trump's supporters feel that something is being done.

The traditional Republican base is small business owners, and particularly small business owners in the types of business where you can't compete without employing illegal immigrants. One of Trump's inaugural event speeches was squeeing about how good it is to employ legal low-skill immigrants on H2B visas (a visa which should have been abolished yesterday). He can't afford to actually deport the illegals, let alone prosecute the people who employ them.

you can't compete without employing illegal immigrants.

The nuance here is that a small business owner cannot compete against other small businesses employing illegal immigrants without himself employing illegal immigrants. That doesn't mean that he is happy about this. He may prefer that ICE deports every-ones cheap illegals. If that actually happens, he can raise prices to fund paying "American" wages, because his rivals are also having to do this. Then demand falls, and some of the small businesses fail, but the survivors of the shakeout are no longer employing illegals. If the elasticity of demand is one, the sector employs fewer people after the shakeout but has about the same revenue. A narrow focus on money would say that it hasn't even shrunk.

The basic economics case against tariffs seems air tight to me. Tariffs seem like a classic policy failure to me.

I shared this opinion, but Noah Smith blackpilled me on tariffs. The tariffs might be sold as economic policy to the base, but they are not. Its pure geopolitics.

Xi Jinping's economic policy has been very successful in deindustrializing other countries. He has paid dearly for it, and now sits on absurd industrial overcapacity in everything from steel to batteries. But that doesn't matter. The pay-off is huge - not only is half the world absolutely depended on China economically, in case of a conventional war, China could force a stale mate and then it can out-last and out-produce the entire rest of the world, combined.

And just like Xi paid dearly for this policy, maybe the west also needs to pay to counter it. Tariffs will be paid by all US consumers, and it's very possible they will get poorer for it. But that doesn't matter.

The tariffs might be sold as economic policy to the base, but they are not. Its pure geopolitics.

I'm not so sure. I'd be convinced of this if we end up with tariffs only on china and whoever ends in their trade-alliance. At the moment however, tariffs are also aimed at allies, and we blocked the nippon-steel merger with Japan which could have also helped a struggling domestic manufacturer. This doesn't really seem like it's about geopolitics, just classic protectionism. I suppose it could be both. The CHIPS act definitely had a strong geopolitical motive.

The pay-off is huge - not only is half the world absolutely depended on China economically, in case of a conventional war, China could force a stale mate and then it can out-last and out-produce the entire rest of the world, combined.

China is hugely dependent on foreign trade, which functionally stops as soon as they’re in a conventional war with the US. No merchant ship will risk going to China and no merchant insurance company will insure it if they have to risk the most powerful blue water navy on Earth sinking it. You thought the Houtis were bad for trade? Meet the USN. They’ll be reduced to land trade with Russia. How are they going to outproduce us then? China does not have the natural resources for autarky.

China may not have the natural resources, but the huge chunk of Asia they have access to almost assuredly does.

We have China surrounded on three sides with allies. Good luck getting your resources from Mongolia, Russia, and North Korea.

As well as the Stans and Persia.

Russia, the nation who is in the top 5 (mostly the top 2) of every mineral tracked by the USGS? That doesn't seem implausible, at all.

They got the minerals, but they don’t have the throughput to get China as much as they need by train. Overland trade is something like 5x more expensive than maritime trade.

Depends on which fraction of expenses is transportation. If for some good 0.1% is replaced by 0.5% it's not that much.

It’s not about expense it’s about throughout. A modern cargo train can carry about 13,000 tons of material. China imports 3 million tons of iron ore per day.

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China is hugely dependent on foreign trade, which functionally stops as soon as they’re in a conventional war with the US.

The EU was arguing like that in favor of Russia for 30 years. But trade did not stop the Russians.

And for China, your points are true today, but Xi thinks in decades. At that time scale, it's all hypotheticals anyway.

  • It's possible that China gets its domestic consumption off the ground, making it less reliant on trade.
  • It's possible that the belt and road initiative leads to a massive increase in land access to trading partners.
  • It's possible that a variety of maritime drones, drone carriers and autonomous missile boats make aircraft carriers the battleship of the 21st century.
  • It's possible that the US turns inwards, and doesn't intervene in conflicts with Taiwan, or even in conflicts with Japan and India.

In all those cases, the US would want at least a strategic industrial base left at home for geopolitical reasons, and having it would out-weight the short-term loss that tariffs would bring today.

Even if China gets domestic consumption off the ground they're still reliant on imports for raw materials. China imports more than than 3 times as much oil is it produces, imports a little under three times as much iron ore as it produces, a little under 3 times as much copper ore as it produces, and produces less than 65% of their food domestically. They need global trade to keep their industry running and their people fed. You're not going to ship the 14 million barrels of oil, 3 million tons of iron ore, and the 161,000 tons of grain that China imports daily by train.

Those exact arguments where used in the case of Russia. They were far from autark before they attacked Ukraine, but that doesn't matter. If you have your propaganda dialed in, your population is sufficiently willing to go along, you can deal with embargoes and even blockades for years.

Yes, the deficit would explode, quality of life would decrease. There would be rationing, followed by an inefficient adaption of domestic production.

China needs far less ore if they stop being the worlds factory floor. They can mitigate the missing oil by continuing electrification, by relying on Russia to break the embargo and by starting coal liquefaction if they really have to. They have more than enough arable land to feed their population.

They do not have enough arable land to feed their population.

Despite its place as the third largest nation in the world, China falls behind other major food producing countries in terms of the availability of arable land (figure 1). Rapid urbanization, pollution, and uses of land for other purposes have all contributed to a rapid decline of agricultural land in China. The total pollution rate in China’s farmland soil is estimated at 10 percent, and about 2.5 percent of that land cannot be cultivated due to excessive contamination with heavy metals. As a result, it is estimated that the country has a domestic planting area shortage of 90 million hectares. This cropland shortage is expected to worsen and will further undermine China’s goals for food self-sufficiency.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/July-August-2022/Critelli/

And if you can survive by drastically reducing your industrial output then you can’t use that industrial output to win a war with the US.

It's not even local imports from e.g. Indonesia either, it's majority trans-oceanic. Grain from Brazil, iron and coal from Canada and Australia, etc.
They can't try what Japan did with the co-prosperity sphere, even if they could cordon off the Pacific as far as Burma.

I wonder if they'll try to develop their domestic iron more. A thousand km over land from Liaoning to where the coal is in Shanxi, wonder how that competes with shipping from Australia.

Edit: woah, they're hauling in a ton of coking coal by rail from Mongolia now. , and they've actually succeeded in weaning themselves off Australian imports.

China is hugely dependent on foreign trade, which functionally stops as soon as they’re in a conventional war with the US. No merchant ship will risk going to China and no merchant insurance company will insure it if they have to risk the most powerful blue water navy on Earth sinking it.

This hinges on your belief that the modern American political system would be willing to sustain a total naval warfare sinking neutral nation shipping in the face of both domestic and international blowback. Consider me less than convinced.

And it's not like you can't ship the more valuable stuff to India or Russia via rail, and whitewash it.

Frankly if you could achieve that it would be considerably beneficial- the volume differences are just that much- but I have a hard time believing that the Americans would want (a) a Russian kinetic entry into the war on the side of China, or (b) attack Indian vessels.

Rather than 'war will end trade between opposing sides,' a lesson of the Ukraine War should probably be the opposite- that vast amounts of trade will continue. The Russians lost a naval blockade to a country with no navy from a far greater position, and second-party smuggling was such that sanction-restrictions really amount to an cost-increase rather than cutoff of contraband goods.

India likes us and hates China and in a conventional war scenario we will be putting pressure on them to cut off any trade into China. Ukraine doesn’t have anywhere close to the power to do that. You can’t compare what happens to trade when a minor power with no allies is in a war to what would happen to trade when the world hegemon goes to war.

This is what people said about sanctioning Russia. History shows that America putting pressure on people to cut off their trade for American geopolitical reasons is a pretty big driver of anti-American sentiment and disentangling from American trade systems.

If we are in a shooting war with China we will be bringing significantly more pressure on our friends and allies not to trade with China than we did for Ukraine. If China and the US are at war than this is WWIII and every country on Earth is going to be asking themselves the question: whose side do I want to be on? The US or the Chinese? I can't imagine India choosing China. China, the bellicose country that keeps trying to push the border with India. China, the country that killed 20 Indian soldiers as recently as 2020. China, the country that has been arming and allying with Pakistan against India. China, the country that keeps building dams in Tibet across the headwaters of major Indian rivers. China, the country Indians have a 67% unfavorable view of (in contrast, 70% of Indians view the US favorably).

If China is going to war with the US then India will be the first to stick a knife in their side.

EDIT: Also, of course they resisted Russian sanctions: they like Russia! They've been great friends with Russia since the 40s, back when it was the USSR. They like the Russians more than they like us, Russia sells them a lot of weapons, they and the Russians go way back. We should not expect India to treat China anything like they treated Russia recently.

More comments

Hasn't Chinese civilization been basically an autarky for most of its history?

For most of its history China would stand no chance against the modern US in a conventional war. The China we’re concerned may stand a chance against us hasn’t been an autarky in half a century.

Except that China makes a good chunk of our (and everyone else’s) goods. They make everything and therefore going to war with them has a huge cost. We no longer have a big clothing or shoes industry. Or auto parts. Etc. we can’t go to war with them for long because we are dependent on their factories for basic materials. Europe was using Russia for electricity, and the6 very quickly found out what a choke point that is.

"We" (or rather the US) can fight a war without clothes, shoes and auto parts. China receives 60-80% of its oil through the Malacca strait. The US has worked for decades to make almost every nation in East Asia an ally in a possible war with China and has stationed a tremendous amount of troops, naval and air assets in that region.
Here's a decently detailed video if you want to learn more about the situation there.

We" (or rather the US) can fight a war without clothes

Somehow I think naked soldiers on the front will have pretty bad optics.

I don't think optics are made from cloth, and anyway they can always fall back to iron sights.

But they'll be on the front, because the oil-powered vehicles will have carried them there.

The pay-off is huge - not only is half the world absolutely depended on China economically, in case of a conventional war, China could force a stale mate and then it can out-last and out-produce the entire rest of the world, combined.

In case of a conventional war, MAD rains hellfire on DC and Beijing, on New York and Shanghai, on Guangzhou and Los Angeles. Chinese factories aren’t hardened and so can be quickly rendered inoperable, but it doesn’t matter, since a war wouldn’t be long.

In case of a conventional war, MAD rains hellfire

China has a stated policy of "no first use", and I can't imagine the US firing nuclear weapons first in most instances (although it doesn't have an explicit policy not to). I suppose those policies are always subject to change when things go hot, but it doesn't seem quite as guaranteed to me as you're implying. Russia hasn't used one yet either, for that matter.

and I can't imagine the US firing nuclear weapons first in most instances

US Nuclear policy for much of the cold war was de facto first use, in the event of a Soviet invasion of western Europe, to make up for a perceived deficit in conventional land forces.

I can't imagine the US firing nuclear weapons first in most instances

I think the US has threatened in the past that it would respond "with any and all means available" to an adversary sinking a carrier group. I can't find the quote now, it might have been in response to nuclear torpedoes. But imagine a scenario where an entire carrier group is sunk by a barrage of conventional hypersonic missiles... I'm not sure they would tolerate even the slightest risk a second carrier is sunk.

You can boil the frog just fine. Can you imagine the US saying in 2021, "we shall now give Ukraine a bunch of cruise missiles that it will use to attack various targets across European Russia" and not triggering a massive crisis like it's 1962? And yet here we are in 2025 and all we hear from Putin is whining about military advisors.

The US can do this to the PRC as well.

The term "conventional" here was used to differentiate it from "nuclear" war. There's several types of conflicts between China and the West where no capitals are being bombed.

It's not at all clear to me how your 2 and 4 fit together. Do you prefer the President to run the federal bureaucracy, or not?

Anyway, there's also the affirmative action order, which is big—among other things, repealing the affirmative action requirements formerly in place for the government and for federal contractors, which were a huge share of the economy.

The legislative branch is supposed to legislate. The president and executive are supposed to execute and implement. There is wiggle room on priorities and implementation detail.

The bureaucracy is a 4th branch of government that has not been responsive to congress or the presidency, and barely responsive to the courts.

I would like the branches to do their jobs. Failing that I'd rather have the executive branch in charge than have an unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucracy.

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