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Notes -
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1909263788295041257
https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1909411006423392583
So the two biggest economies are now locked in a full-scale trade war... I suspect this will be more severe than previous skirmishing. In the past China imposed restrictions on imports of Australian wine, lobster and coal due to us calling for an inquiry into COVID. The Australian government basically ignored this without retaliating and eventually (with a change of govt over here to the less anti-Chinese Labour party) the restrictions were dropped. And they didn't touch iron ore, our biggest and most important export.
But nobody really cares about Australia, there's no loss of face in restoring trade relations like there would be with being seen to submit to Trump. You can show magnanimity to a weaker country but you probably can't show weakness to a peer power. Plus the US-China tariffs seem to be much more comprehensive, there's no shielded goods listed. I highly doubt that Xi will back down here like Trump seems to be asking. Giving a one day ultimatum is quite rude.
It seems that Trump's strategy is to shake down the US's weaker trading partners (the 'other countries which have requested meetings') and try to smash the stronger powers like China and possibly the EU. The EU might even fall into the 'weaker' category if Trump can link security to the trade relationship, Vance and co wanted to send Europe the bill for bombing Yemen since it was mostly European trade flowing through the Red Sea. The US has opportunities for leverage in terms of energy flows now that Russia is persona non grata and with defence via NATO. On the other hand, the EU is run by Trump-haters and they're hardened experts in economically wrecking their own countries, so they may show some backbone.
Anyway, who has more leverage between the US and China?
China's exports to the US ($500 billion) are mostly manufactured goods, electronics and machinery. These are ironically the things you'd need to industrialize the US, though a lot is also consumer goods. China dominates certain industries like port equipment as seen here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/11jsyyf/well_thats_unfortunate/
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports/united-states
The US's exports to China ($144 billion) are a mix of agriculture/energy and electronics (semiconductors are included in this category), aircraft, machinery.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports/china
Personally I favour a supply-focused view of trade conflicts. If you're losing out on $500 billion worth of goods due to high tariffs (an additional 50% on top of the 34% and the previous tariffs really add up!) then that's worse than 34% or 84% if Xi matches on a mere $144 billion. Many of those goods will be prerequisites for US production. A much smaller proportion of Chinese imports will be prerequisites and soybeans/gas can be bought from elsewhere. Plus the Chinese approach to industrial policy seems much more sophisticated, they target key sectors to build up economies of scale. They foster development in high-tech industries with huge state backing. They do plenty on the supply side, tariffs only affect prices and demand. I think China is not too concerned about losing US imports, they want to replace them with indigenous suppliers on the high-end anyway and have been working hard to do this for years and years, that's Made in China 2025. There is no equivalent comprehensive program to reshore production in the US.
And if China loses some of their exports, at least they retain production capacity. Those mobile phones and plastic toys could go to Chinese kids instead.
I've seen others online favouring a demand-focused view, so there is room for difference on this (elasticity matters a lot).
I think China will come out ahead here unless Trump manages some crazy 4D chess bullying other nations into tariffing China too. China is the central hub of the world economy in terms of trade flows, their economy is larger in real terms and their political system seems to be more stable, less erratic.
Edit: https://x.com/typesfast/status/1909362292367802840
This seems even crazier if true, it's like Trump is deliberately trying to crash the US economy with these hasty, no-warning orders and fines. See the thread for details. This is how you don't do industrial policy.
My impression after obsessively monitoring this situation for days (of course) is that neither side will fold, tariffs are here to stay, and everyone will be poor and mad for it. China of course won't fold, the idea that they're at risk is preposterous, they can well weather complete cessation of export to the US.
Broadly I have concluded that the main problem the US faces is racism towards the Chinese; the ill-earned sense of centrality and irreplaceability. I believe that Trump, Navarro and the rest of that gang are as misinformed as the average MAGA guy on Twitter, given how they speak and that amusing formula. Americans still think that their great consumption is the linchpin of Chinese economy, 10-30% of their GDP (it's more like 3%); that the Chinese produce apparel, “trinkets” and low-quality materials (they also produce things that Americans plausibly cannot start producing at the same quality in years); that American IP is vital for their industry (they're making their own software, OSes, CPUs…) and so on. The idea that American de-industrialization is a product of betrayal by Wall Street Elites who offshored jobs to China also feeds into the delusional notion of possible parity – but the truth is that there has never been a point in history where American industry had scale or diversity comparable to what's going on in China now. The issue with their bad financials is also overblown; as for losing markets, they have the capital at hand for consumption stimulus. This guy from Beijing writes:
Accordingly, with a higher real GDP, their effective debt to GDP ratio may be as low as 150%, not 200-300%. They have US assets to sell too.
So China can trivially absorb half of the overcapacity freed by reduced trade with the US, and might find buyers for the rest.
My thesis is that in picking this fight, Americans don't understand that they're actually not that big of a deal. Unfortunately, their delusions are globally shared and become reality in their own right. But perhaps not enough to offset the gross physical one.
The actual dangerous thing for China here is that Trump seems determined to immiserate the whole planet, completely irrespective of any geopolitical rivalry, because he's an illiterate anarcho-primitivist and thinks that all trade is theft unless it's barter, basically. America vs. The World, especially with a chain reaction of tariffs on Chinese (and likely also Vietnamese etc…) capacity spillover, results in massive reduction of productivity for everyone. For now, nations like Vietnam are unilaterally dropping tariffs on American crap, but that can't be a big effect because their tariffs were low to begin with, and Americans just don't and cannot produce enough at price points that people of those nations can afford. (We may see IMF loans for 3rd world countries importing overpriced American beef or Teslas or whatever to placate Don, but I doubt it'll be sustainable). I suppose in the long run the idea is that Optimus bots will be churning out products with superhuman efficiency, at least Lutnick argues as much. But that's still years away. Perhaps this extortion of zero balance trade (so in effect, the demand that trading partners buy non-competitive American products) is meant to finance the transition to posthuman automated economy. Bold strategy.
I am of course very amused and curious to see how it'll go. Will Fortress America intimidate the rest of us into submission, likely forever? Or will it be so stubborn, brutal and ham-fisted that humanity will finally rebel and ostracize the rogue state, letting it broil in its own supremacist fantasies? Can Bessent et al. turn 1D “trade le bad” checkers of the King of Understanding Things (懂王) into 4D chess? We shall see.
Suppose you wake up tomorrow morning, and find that, worse than Gregor Samsa, your consciousness has been transmigrated into the skull of The Donald. Further, the divine agency enacting this alteration has placed an aegis upon you, such that you cannot blow your brains out in horror; for your many sins, you have been given the penance of wielding great power to Make Things Better.
What do you do? What does "better" look like, and how do you steer things to get there? Assume that, like Trump, you are not particularly bound by norms or even your own prior positions, that you have a great deal of sway over ~50% of the American public, and that you have more-or-less full control of the dominant political party which currently has tenuous control over all three branches of Government. What would the plan be?
I don't want my country to rule China. I certainly don't want to be ruled by them, but I stubbornly believe it's possible to step back from what I perceive to be a long-metastasizing American global empire and to move toward a world where we get our own country working and simply leave other people alone. I'm open to the idea that Trump is a swinish idiot and I am as well, but what does actual wisdom look like? Was it a good idea to help build China into the unrivaled manufacturing and arguably economic colossus that it currently seems to be? I'm pretty sure it wasn't a good idea to try to invade and destroy multiple other countries in the name of "spreading democracy", but maybe you disagree? Was Biden on the right track? Obama? Bush? Or if the string of presidents preceding Trump were all cold, merciless imperial manipulators and Trump is a moronic rampaging swine, can it really be that both of these things are perfectly equally awful, or is one in some way preferable to the other?
There's a thing you wrote one time, about how your people and mine could never be friends, that our relationship would always be conducted across gunsights. Maybe so. But I, at least, have zero desire to actually start shooting, and I perceive the people on my side who want to start shooting, who believe the conflict to be innate and existential, as the enemy that is innate and existential to me. Maybe this is naive. Maybe the perspective I perceive from you is correct, that everything is doomed and the evil always win, and no matter how things change they always change for the worse.
A year ago, the narrative was that Trump could not win, and that if he did win nothing would actually change. Now the narrative is that he's changing everything for the worse. Maybe so! I'm waiting to see what the next updates say, though.
There are so many things wrong with what Trump is doing that I find it silly to write a serious response. Literally an LLM would manage. For one thing, accept Von Der Leyen's offer of mutual tariff drop, that's enough of a “win” for your base and an actual economic boon! Apologize to Denmark and negotiate expanded military presence in Greenland under the existing framework. Offer China a mutual reduction in tariffs for sectors where you actually cannot back up your confidence. Tell Bukele to send back the wantonly arrested innocents for a fair trial. Stop gutting STEM research institutions. Crush or pay off the longshoremen, abolish Jones act. Buy a shitton of equipment for manufacturing drones. Put a few bombers on Guam instead of in Afghanistan, send a garrison onto Taiwan. It's not really complicated, he's done too many errors.
Many questions. Was it a good idea to help build China? Probably not, but was it a bad idea to exploit their growth for salvaging your own one? I guess not again. Invasions? I think that was dumb. Biden? Yes, I think that Biden, or rather the system behind his limp body, was highly effective in reaching at least some subset of relevant goals of the Empire, it was going pretty smoothly. I am surprised to see them so thoroughly vanquished so fast.
How to deescalate? Oh, that's a big one. I think it's psychologically impossible, the US isn't willing to be #2, even if that carries none or minimal material demerits. Neither is Xi willing to give up on his system, or on Taiwan. History will decide.
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What were “his people” and “your people”, in this context?
Russians and Anglos, IIRC. His framing, not mine, but the point seemed reasonable. Given our history, particularly post-USSR, I do not expect Russians to assume Anglos are pursuing cooperation with them in good faith.
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