Trump’s Tariff Strategy Explained in 18 Minutes
April 4th, 2025I never thought I would see the U.S. resist China’s grand strategy.
It would have been nice to have done it more slowly.
Factories could have been built, the expertise could have been cultivated, markets could have adjusted in an orderly manner…
Nope. That’s not how it’s going to go.
Trump has less than four years to try to do what would, in any sane approximation, take twenty.
Welcome to the deep end.
Via: Tucker Carlson:
To get a grip on what trade imbalances are about, Michael Pettis can be of some help.
https://podtail.com/podcast/ft-alphachat/michael-pettis-on-the-mechanics-and-politics/
Then you can turn to Aaron Benanav, who exposes a fallacy in Pettis’s view.
Pettis and Klein’s causal argument runs from asymmetrical domestic class conflict to rising inequality, which leads in turn to gluts of manufacturing goods, job loss and rising indebtedness. By depressing wages domestically, firms end up depending on global sources of demand for their expansion while also reducing total spending in the global economy. Unfortunately, the book gets its causal mechanism exactly backwards. In Pettis and Klein’s account, global competitive pressures are a ‘fetish’ — a mere ‘euphemism for pushing wages down’, either directly or through currency depreciation and weaker social-safety nets — that capitalists deploy in their wars on workers. In fact, the global glut is real and causally primary; the pressures it has induced to cut wage costs and depreciate currencies, to gain competitive advantages, are stark.
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii125/articles/aaron-benanav-world-asymmetries
What if, instead of promising to deport the illegals etc and doing these things as slowly as will keep us pacified while he does bad things behind our backs to suit our enemies, Trump is promising them that he’ll do bad things only in order to pacify them while he slowly but surely carries out his promises to us? That seems like a long shot, but since he has the ego of a Napoleon…
FFS, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. He may have some valid points but no one held a gun to the heads of the boards who decided to relocate manufacturing to China ? They did it out of greed, though the overarching reason is that it was planned and is part of the plan of the ruling class to control all of humanity. I expect the Chinese still remember the humiliation during the 1800s and still smart over the Tianamen Square BS – despite a warning the following link is safe https://johnmensadue.com/post/2023/06/how-psy-ops-warriors-fooled-me-about-tiananmen-square-a-warning/
China is moving to a position of dominance while the US is declining and this will be largely in place by the early 30’s.
Best we get on and enjoy life while we can, make preparations for draconians times, physically, mentally & spiritually. It aint going to be pretty no matter which nation is at the helm.
Back in Australia and I notice a big increase in Chinese brands of car on the road. Got me thinking how heavy industry is repurposed for war; GM, Chrysler & Ford became major armaments manufacturers in the ’40s.
I read just a day or two ago in a news article that Ford is cutting back because “it is mostly a manufacturer of trucks”. News to me, but it supports your comment.