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I Am Unhappy with Trump on China
I am unhappy that Trump is following the same sort of airy mess that Bush and Obama did with China. They steal our IP and we do nothing.
China is the threat to our Republic at the current time. They want to be the Asian power. The United States needs to remain the Asian power. I know many libertarians disagree on this. Tough. Someone has to be the world’s superpower, and if we retreat to a regional power in North America, China will expand and threaten freedom.
If a trade war is needed to protect American’s rights, then we need to bite the bullet. Trump should talk to the American people, explain what is at stake, and call on American’s to sacrifice in pursuit of all our interests. (Has any president since Reagan even done that? It used to be a common thing). China has a coming demographic implosion. We need to counter them until that happens.
Published in General
You think Hillary (Mrs. Establishment wisdom) would have killed the TPP the way Trump did? Nah. She would have futzed around with it made some tweaks and declared it a revitalized success and moved on. Now I happen to think this would have been the better thing to do. But, I think there were enough voters for whom this was exactly what they hated most about her and her brand of politics vs. Trump.
Yes Clinton was against TPP like Obama was against SSM.
Alow me this analogy.
My right leg is my strongest leg. It is my kick butt (military) leg. My left leg supports (economic) my kick butt leg.
Both are equally important. I can only get by with my left leg if all parties are pacifist.
The recent Ricochet podcast had Kudlow on it made me feel a bit better on the China issue. I suggest you give it a listen.
Damn straight Bryan.
However, I would go several steps further.
We need to decouple from China. Completely. Right now. Yes it would be painful, perhaps very painful, but the threat China poses both economically and militarily is existentially great. The benefits of trade with China do not come anywhere close to outweighing the absolute disaster that trade has brought.
From an economic prospective, it is just not about IP theft. China is an economic predator nation. It has used it’s central bank to print gazillions to undercut the normal competitive workings of the free market, providing a nearly unlimited financial backing for it’s businesses to undercut our industries with far cheaper products to drive them out of business, which it has done successfully time and again. It has a myriad of trade restrictions, not just tariffs that block any real market penetration of our products. It has scoured the world seeking to lock down access to key raw materials and deny us access in the future. It is spending like crazy on AI to dominate that field and take over technological world dominance with the ability to psychologically penetrate every digital aspect of the market to influence opinion like you have never seen. Like any economic predator when it achieves market dominance in the not too distant future it will surely squeeze us dry.
Trade with China was supposed to make it more like us with greater democracy and respect for human rights. The opposite has happened. Greater economic and military power has led to a stronger power in the Chinese Central government to control it’s citizens. It has used it’s new technological prowess to control it’s populace in ways that were not very long ago unimaginable. It’s new premier is the most dictatorial since Mao who he wants to emulate. He has even tried to bring back the “cult of personality” and impose that nonsense on the Chinese populace.
But it is militarily where China is the greatest threat. We have helped fund the huge Chinese Military expansion that now threatens the world. China is well on it’s way to develop hyper-sonic missiles that would overwhelm any missile defense we are now thinking of developing. China already has an advanced nuclear arsenal and has often threatened us with an EMT attack. Nuclear war is no longer off the table. Yes, it is possible that China could attack us, but it more likely that China would threaten us into submission as a subservient nation when it achieves an overwhelming military dominance. We have lost much of our military muscle and know how. We are not seriously countering China’s moves. Worse yet, we have leaders like Buraq Hussein, the Progressives and unfortunately much of our young who have lost the will to fight at a time where we may soon face an existential threat from China in a hair-raising confrontation. It’s time we wake up.
Thomas L. Friedman Wants Us “to be China for a day,” to “authorize the right solutions”
What he meant to say was, “Vote Democrat.”
China is building that Silk Road thing to Europe, too. I think they intend for that infrastructure project to soak up a bunch of their fiat money.
I really wish the Taoists beat the Confucians. lol
There are other ways to rattle China’s cage without tariffs. I suspect Bolton is trying to move us in this direction, but it takes time.
Yes, that’s a revealing column, and either disingenuous or stupid. You can be China “for a day” and “authorize the right solutions,” but to implement them you have to be China, permanently.
Yes, Hoyacon, at the very least we should play the Taiwan card and arm Taiwan to the teeth if you think we need to send a message before we do anything more drastic. That may put in a better position militarily but it won’t change the economic dynamic much. Neither will tariffs alone.
Can we avoid these kinds of attacks on people who disagree with you? Those who think like you have no monopoly on thought.
We can disagree on how much in each case. In no way am I willing to depend on the patriotism of anti-Americans such as run Google. I think there should be laws against dealing with the Chi Coms, because they are Evil incarnate. Any regime which uses political prisoners for organ transplants should not be someone we allow anyone to do business with.
I like the thoughts, but China does not have the ability to sustain any sort of fight. Their “army” spends more time in political indoctrination than training. Their silly islands they are building will be totally useless in a sea war. Japan learned that lesson in WWII. We can teach that to China again.
To me the goal is keep China busy until they are too old to fight.
I think it shows that at heart, like everyone on the left, he is a tyrant at heart. He knows what he would impose on everyone else.
Bryan: “I like the thoughts, but China does not have the ability to sustain any sort of fight.
Bryan, nuclear weapons can be a great equalizer. Ability to sustain a fight may not be that important a factor in a nuclear confrontation.
From Zerohedge and Tyler Durden :
STRATCOM General warns : US is powerless against hypersonic missile attacks from China, Russia
“The United State is extreme vulnerable to future attack via hypersonic missiles and is falling behind in the technological know-how to defend the homeland from threat, the commander of the United States Strategic Command told the Senate Armed Services on Tuesday”
“We (U.S.) don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon (hypersonic missiles) against us”
“Hyten told Inhofe, “both Russia and China are aggressively pursuing hypersonic capabilities. We have watched them test those capabilities.”
“Earlier this month, we reported that Russia test-fired a high-precision Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missile from a MiG-31 supersonic interceptor jet in the South Military District in Russia’s southwest.”
“In late 2017, China conducted several tests of a hypersonic glide vehicle that could be used to defeat U.S. missile defense systems, nevertheless more recently, Russia’s hypersonic glider is one of six new strategic weapons announced recently via Russian leader Vladimir Putin”
“CNBC points out “it is clear that the U.S. lacks the means to combat hypersonics,” nevertheless has poorly allocated funds to develop the technologies over the years — thus enabling Russia and China to advance hypersonics to a higher degree.”
“Hyten has been on record — calling Russia the “most significant threat” to Washington, and emphasized the need for the Pentagon to modernize its nuclear weapon programs.”
“Hyten said the U.S. is somewhat ahead of Russia and China in some hypersonic technologies, but overall is severely behind the curve.”
“The next phase is a U.S. response “and the first way to respond to it is to be able to see the threat, which, right now, is challenging. So we have to build capabilities to see what the threat is as well,” he added.”
“Hyten said defense companies and the Pentagon need to progress hypersonic technologies immediately. He mentioned the need for advanced technologies in sensors to track and identify the origin of a hypersonic threat.”
“I think we have stability with Russia on the nuclear side,” he said. “We have an advantage with China on the nuclear side. But they are gaining ground quickly, especially when you look at space and cyber.”
China can’t fight a sustained war, and they cannot project power.
@bryangstephens I can’t agree with the conclusion of your post. I think you are taking two distinct issues and merging them into one issue. The stealing of U. S. technology is an issue of national security. The trade deficit with China is a trade issue. The problem in my opinion is that the administration is trying to solve it by focusing on country based trade imbalances. That approach results in poor trade policy. Jim Pethokoukis addressed this in a post on Ricochet. Trade wars hurt both countries. I think we should implement policies that hurt China more than they do us. The strategy of the Trump trade policy group does not appear to have a consensus. What the president decides on the ZTE issue will determine what his policy is on stealing U. S. technology.
@dannyalexander I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. And they get a little help from North Korea.
I eagerly wait on your post outlining what we should do about China stealing our IP. Please pm me to make sure I see it.
Typo or Freudian slip? That’s precisely what the North Koreans fear: that the U.S. wishes to reign over their nation. :-)
I’ve agreed with almost everything that you’ve said except for this. I think that we seriously underestimate China’s ability and overestimate our own–it will be our undoing.
I don’t agree. China understands that they can’t possibly compete with the U.S. anytime soon. The real risk is a WWII style change in their estimation of their chances, not in their actual chances. VDH makes the point that the question of whether Germany, Italy, and Japan could defeat the Allies was a banal one. But millions of people had to die to prove what should have been obvious.
Part of U.S. policy on China needs to be insuring they keep the correct estimation of their non-existent chances.
A very arrogant analysis. Never underestimate your enemy.
OK, as someone who has studied the numbers, I think Mr. Soto is spot on here. They do not have a Western Army. Their Army spends more time being lectured than trained. Their armed forces are not even unified. The Army is part of their political party. They are sinking money into islands that in any sort of war, would be isolated and ripe targets to be flattened. Islands for control of the sea does not work. We proved that already in WWII.
The threat needs to be respected, but not over blown.
Well, I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t predict the future, but I’d be very curious to see who is the dominant force in the world 20 to 30 years from now—I don’t think it will be America if things remain as they are. Also, military capability is just one dimension in a multi-dimensional game. What worked in the past may not necessarily work in the future. The best way to defeat an enemy is by subverting them, not by brute force.
I’ll take that bet.
Simon Mikhailovich and Todd Harrison discussing this on twitter.
Simon Mikhailovich is smart as hell. He grew up in the USSR and left with nothing at age 19. I must have watched or heard I half a dozen interviews of him.
Central banks are a geopolitical tool. To the extent they ease, they are regressively taxing their population and redistributing wealth to certain sectors. Then people vote, which makes everything worse.