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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.
I can of course only speak for myself, and not the Trump administration, or even the "MAGA movement" as a whole.
IR policy wonks would say that this suggestion is nonsense; that any conflict between the US and China is just the rational, mechanistic outcome of two world powers who are both vying to secure their own interests. But for my part I will acknowledge that, yes, there is a racial element to the designation of China in particular as a geopolitical adversary, as opposed to some other nation. Ceteris paribus, I would prefer for world power to remain concentrated in the hands of European and European-derived peoples, as opposed to non-European peoples. (This is largely already a doomed project due to the ongoing mestizofiction of America, but, you know, you can't win 'em all...) And I particularly don't want power to rest with the Chinese, who have produced a civilization that (in its current phase of historical development at any rate) I view as uniquely soulless and utilitarian. (I do not view all non-Europeans, or even all East Asians, as exactly equivalent in this regard; if Japan were in China's position instead, I would be welcoming them as liberators!)
The Chinese, too, have a sense of centrality and irreplaceability. They too believe that they have a world historical mission to be the center of world civilization. Very well then, we shall see who prevails.
But all this only goes so far as influencing the fundamental choice to take up the conflict in the first place; it has no bearing on the strategic considerations for how the conflict should actually be navigated. China is obviously very powerful and capable, and it would be the height of foolishness to underestimate them as a nation of "trinket producers".
A change in American economic policy sent global markets into a tailspin, so objectively speaking, America is in fact a big deal.
I can only say that engaging with the Chinese, and with people like you, has gradually convinced me that White People (Hajnali European stock specifically) are basically jumped-up serfs, the confused lower caste of prawns from District 9, with little more to offer to the world sans stale kanging and hollow, corporate-coded pretense of “soul” that, if it ever existed, resided in your currently extinct owners. You don't even notice my point about simple economics and logistics, so lost you are in your racial superiority masturbation. But of course those issues are related.
But it isn't, and you are largely responsible for that, because your previous generation had the exact same attitude towards the Japanese. Deaths from overwork, rigid hierarchy, soulless collectivist automatons cheating and copying to flood the markets and dispossess our Christian Germanic workers – this can't be allowed, can it? Oh, what a pity that now that we know them better, Japan is a geriatric country of no ambition, that mainly produces anime to give you some respite from the toxic antihuman sludge of your own media. (Presumably this is the fault of Joos. Somehow for all your natural nobility of spirit you are not capable of resisting a tiny tribe of natural wordcels. At least the Chinese managed to overthrow the Manchu).
Regrettably, China is 10 times larger and the same tricks won't work.
Yes, you can do a great deal of damage to humanity. This is akin to the bafflingly swinish line of argument that “China needs us more than we need them, because they need to sell their valuable manufactured goods to someone; our consumption is more valuable than production”. We shall see how well this philosophy works.
Speak for yourself, serf.
What I see is the inverse. The professional managerial class seems to have internalized this idea that intelligent reasonable moral people should not exercise agency.. That intelligent reasonable and moral person does not just do things, and if they do the inescapable conclusion is the individual in question is not reasonable, not intelligent, not moral, and possibly not even a person.
Ironically this valorization of non-agency and the demonizing of those like Elon Musk and Daniel Penney who break from this is itself the road to serfdom. The serf is a serf because he prefers the guarantees of servitude to the risks of being a free agent.
He's a spurned Russian nationalist who has run into the arms of the Chinese. A tragic outcome I don't wish of the Russians writ large. Being a serf isn't a problem so much as a traitor. Justifying that, welcoming the Chinese overlords, on the accusation of Europeans of being serfs is... interesting especially given this criticism is in context of the erratic behavior of high-agency people rocking the boat, like you said.
This is of course a projection of your own tribalism and your own deluded moral framework.
Your problem is that your only guiding light, the only salvation you see for your people, is Nazism, and Nazism is still quite degenerate and NGMI. I won't talk of its moral merits, it's just strategically bad because it's aestheticized desperation and refuge from hopelessness in animalistic impulses. A stronk chieftain (high agency!), will to power (rock the boat!), blood-based tribal identity, vibes over facts… in effect, reject modernity, retvrn by rolling back the evolutionary clock 9000 years, to where an average European was a fat bipolar slob with 65 IQ. Nazism was swiftly crushed by Capitalism and Communism. 80 years later, they remain the dominant forces on the planet and continue their dialectic and coevolution. You like to think that Judaism is still more important, the root of all evil. Well, it's underrated for obvious reasons, I'll give you that, but Earth is a big place, and your struggle with Joos is ultimately quite parochial.
I have observed many sincere Nazis over the years and most are suicidal. It doesn't have to be this way. Accept that the dream of Aryan greatness is dead, but you can live if you accept this world on its own terms, where your people have some advantages and disadvantages entirely irrespective of “jewish manipulation” or “suicidal empathy” or what have you, and need to manage them soberly. In particular this requires a good understanding of where you stand relative to that huge chunk of humanity in East Asia. One approach is to cope with 4chan gifs of tortured dogs and industrial accidents, or the book of Ralph Townsend. Another is to grow the fuck up.
And yet you run into the arms of National Socialism with Chinese Characteristics... No, Nazism is a dead political movement, not something to be treated as a cheap foreign import. I want to see something new, not trying to rehash a dead ideology, and certainly not turning traitor and running for the embrace of the Chinese who hold those same racial sensibilities you mock Europeans for, and which Europeans do not themselves actually hold.
You simultaneously mock Europeans for being "not capable of resisting a tiny tribe of natural wordcels" and for being parochial when they do voice resistance. You just hate Europeans, particularly the West Europeans, you see them as your enemy and you always have. It's unfortunate. Whatever you accuse me of, my hope for the future is fundamentally pro-European, I want the best for Europe and the United States and I do not want to see them under Chinese hegemony. That's not the future I wish for Russia either. You can mock the suicidal Nazis, I will mock the despondent Russian nationalists who have decided to become Chinese nationalists to have some sort of vent for their understandable but misguided hatred of Europe.
It's a funny joke but really, they're not any more National Socialist than any normal European state was before WWII. They are quite different from historical Nazis. They have a representation for minorities (even repressed ones) and affirmative action, they have legalized gender transition, they employ open furries in the PLA (explicitly as fursuit engineers, to develop next generation combat armor). Their notions of “degeneracy” or “racial hygiene” would be quite alien to Germans. The basic level of care for the ethnic majority is just what a state is supposed to do. And Socialism – that they owe to being literally Marxists, with a big portrait of Marx in their main hall of power and stuff. They're far more Capitalist than the Third Reich was, too. Xi has restored the cult of personality, though. Seriously speaking, it's its own complex thing, and should be considered on its own merits in its own historical context, not as a copy or a pastiche of Western paradigms. When all is said and done they're just a modernized Chinese empire.
I apologize. My sarcasm there may have been too confusing. I don't think Jews are solely guilty for the quality of your media. Jews, from what I can tell, genuinely like their sermonizing slop, but so does the audience, and creators are increasingly Gentiles too. I think you just have ran out of gas. Particularly Americans. Your culture is vulgar and plain bad, and you should feel bad about it. Your mavericks are sleazy hustlers at best and psychopaths at worst, and you do not resist your worst impulses to bow before the undeserving strongman. You come up with zany and harmful ideas and then force them upon everybody else. Thus, you are what has to be resisted now, at least until you improve somehow.
I don't hate Europeans. I am disappointed in you. In you collectively and in you, SecureSignals, personally. You are less than what I figured, you don't deliver on the crucial advertised open-mindedness and ability-to-change-opinions features, and you take pride in stuff that's completely meh or plainly disgusting. You're like some purebred dogs. Remarkable, peculiar, WEIRD phenotype, but no spark, or almost never. Disappointing.
And at the rate you're going, you may well see Chinese hegemony. It is indeed unfortunate because the Chinese themselves never had it in them to establish one, I don't think. Too insular, too mercantile, too autistically uncharismatic, and frankly not capable enough to dismantle natural affinities and alliances. They'd have secured their backyard and grew content to have limited trade with barbarians, and this was the scenario I still consider preferable. But a few more iterations of low-IQ, smug WINNING and ROCKING THE BOAT, and who knows, they may have to pick up the crown tossed their way.
And the ironic thing is that all this is because you'd have wanted your own hegemony, because for all the denialism – the dream, the hope of being Intrinsically Racially Superior, crushing lessers under the jackboot, still lives and yearns for confirmation. Alas.
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