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We go from declaring China's industrial base the best in the world to failing to grok why Trump would want to move cutting-edge chip manufacturing from China's border to the Southwest. Pick a lane, Trump's motivations aren't that inscrutable, you can have your cake and eat it too and still call him a narcissist if you want.
Latest estimate from Fed of Atlanta is GDP growth of 5.1%, US defense spending topping $1 Trillion, announcement from Space Force of weapons systems in orbit, manufacturers reshoring to US, AI buildout, Starship. You don't have to believe it will work but it is being attempted, there are very smart people working on this exact problem and some of them are at the highest levels of government. It's not the Obama era anymore, America is building more than social media and carbon credits.
Do you deny that Trump explicitly claims that Taiwan is ripping Americans off? Because he does.
Moving chip industry off the Chinese coast is indeed rational and, if anything, reinforces my assertion that the US is not interested in a nuclear war (or, really, any war) over the island. If TSMC Arizona and such is scaled up, that's even less reason to intervene in the Strait.
Most of that has zero relation to Taiwan (but may be relevant on a longer time horizon for a generic competition with China). The US has just burned through maybe 50% of munitions that were supposed to be necessary for deterring PLAN in the Strait. Nobody is getting ready to stop the Chinese invasion.
You might be confused. I'm not arguing that the US stands no chance against the PRC in general, I'm saying very specifically, that there is no political will in the US to intervene over Taiwan, especially to the extent that might escalate to nuclear exchange. The idea is ludicrous, and the stuff about Neville Chamberlain is not going to make it less so.
The Chinese also know they're not Nazis and nobody seriously expects them to be Nazis. It's not credible.
You can tell what war a country is planning to fight by following the money to their munitions procurement. In the case of the United States, if you follow the money, you will notice (among other things) that they intend to increase production of torpedoes.
Are they likely to be low on torpedo stockpiles? No; a quick look at Wikipedia tells you that they had 1,000 heavyweight torpedoes stockpiled in 2001, they have continued production at a low rate since then (50/year as of 2017, Wikipedia thinks, so you can estimate total inventories somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000).
Background knowledge tells you that training torpedoes are reusable, so their burn rate from training is low. The entire US submarine fleet can only hold 1,500 torpedoes or so, even if they were all deployed at once (they won't be; a quick Google tells you that 20ish attack submarines will be out of service at any one time) and were only carrying torpedoes (they won't be).
The entire Russian Navy is about 70 submarines and 100 major fleet combatants. The entire Chinese Navy is about 75 submarines and fewer than 200 major surface vessels. (Not including minesweepers or amphibious assault/transport ships in the count here, or, say, patrol boats, but including some low-capability combatants such as corvettes.) In any conflict involving one or both of those opponents, the US would not rely on its submarines alone to sink their ships, and it would be fighting alongside allies.
So one can conclude that the US is preparing to fight a war against ocean-going opponent(s) at a scale so grand that they anticipate their attack submarines will expend their entire onboard munitions stockpile, return to port, reload, and sally forth with more torpedoes.
Based on that evidence, what exactly would you say they are "getting ready" for?
A conventional war in an environment saturated with large underwater drones, perhaps. Might make some difference.
I maintain that there are no plans to have a nuclear war or any war over Taiwan. Guam, Okinawa etc will be hardened.
Perhaps (particularly since the US is looking into a low-cost heavyweight) but...over what?
This is a sort of ambiguous statement. Are you saying that the US does not intend to start a war over Taiwan, or that it has no contingencies in place for waging a war over Taiwan?
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Neat, you get to agree with Trump in one register and insult him in another, after putting enough rhetorical distance between Our Blessed Homelands and Their Barbarous Wastes.
The story about US burning through THAADs was basically fake news that relied on conflating old systems and some prototypes with munitions in general. Mostly, though, I don't believe these stories and estimates that rely on the commentariat somehow having precise knowledge of how large the American arsenal is. (What I mean is: this kind of estimate is so obviously bullshit that it reflects badly on your infodiet if you believe it.)
I get to be correct and still not be a bootlicker like you, indeed. Convenient, that.
What rhetorical distance? This and that are different issues. Trump lies. Lies all the time. Lies egregiously, spreads libels, has zero dignity, no regard for truth and honesty etc. In particular he lies about Taiwan stealing the chip industry from the United States.
You, Shakes, are a natural slave and brownshirt, a cardboard cutout of the authoritarian personality type from Adorno's book, so you idolize your strongman and excuse his lies as well as any other sign of his moral degeneracy. Perhaps you could defend this with the rationale that in the American culture it'd be difficult to rally the constituency for reindustrialization without making up an offense and spreading bitchy, whiny libel about your client state. That, of course, would point to an even deeper moral degeneracy of your culture. But you didn't even bother to do that, instead you try to invent some hypocrisy and double standard, and perhaps you even truly interpret my words as such, because you are in fact a barbarian who, like Trump, doesn't have any standard except the standard of safe opportunity for pillage and extraction. I'm not sure. It's hard for me to model the "mindset" of a true patriot.
This is a popular cope in some patriotic circles. However, these are not some black projects, the budget for standard munitions is reported to the Congress, the production rate of PrSM or ATACMS is not difficult to reconstruct.
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