I really want to keep my experience to myself here, but Americans once approached me to sell their soy to southeast Asia when China stopped buying them. They told me to turn it, into a soy drink.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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You may read this in wrong way...
if you are referring to ASEAN part of global south. Vietnam and Thailand over long term they will want to become part of West.
while Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia will have more balanced approach. there is now way this Global south can deal with West when Soft Power is inside West.
Vietnam is somewhat friendly to China. They are being used as a reexport hub for U.S imports.
Thailand is pro China. The PM has Chinese roots or half Chinese. Singapore is pro China. Mostly Han Chinese lives there. Malaysia and Indonesia are also friendly.
Korea is neutral. Only Japan and Philippine are not.
It's time for all bottleneck materials and components controlled by China to stop heading towards the US, in addition to secondary sanctions on any resellers trying to circumvent the export ban.
Isn't US effectively sanctioning itself now?
China's problem with the tariffs is that in the long term, Beijing expects to use the US market as part of its overall profiteering. But this isn't a short to medium term concern.
The purpose of new sanctions would be to keep dropping US living standards to encourage surrender. The method would mainly be by not letting Chinese companies sell to US (or US friendly companies). Well guess what's gonna happen now anyways. There's a reason US finance/economy took the news so badly...
Imo rather than sanctions China should look into asset forfeiture. Put a special income tax on the companies from US and any country willing to concede anything to US. Like for example now every time Apple makes 10 billion, 3 billion of that is not allowed to be transferred out of China. Same goes for any country who wants to transfer money to USA, you'll pay extra/earn less from any of your interactions with China.
The really questionable thing is that if China sanctions, US people will be rallied because Xi Jinping told them they can't have X necessary product. But with Trump's economy "reform", people will be rallied against the own government instead because Trump told them they can't have X necessary product. The outcome is the same. Of course I don't think US can rally to become effectively self sufficient, but Trump sorta makes things very easy for Xi here.
That's part of the problem. Doing that would strengthen the USD in the long term because the real backer of the USD is that China accepts it as payment. China will need to be ready to sacrifice profits in the US market for the higher goal of weakening the US.
A critical vulerability in modern industrial systems is the "just-in-time" logistics scheme. Minimal input stockpiles are maintained and replacement parts for maintenance are ordered when required. A disruption to either of these and industrial systems will literally tear themselves apart, crippling the entire chain. Failures will cascade to tangential and downstream systems. Pharmaceuticals, energy, manufacturing are all sectors that implement JIT logistics for efficiency. With enough disruption, the US suddenly finds itself in pre-industrial era quality of life. Guess where these inputs and replacement components come from?
At the core, China is not actually retaliating over tariffs. They're taking advantage of US scoring an own goal to push for an even stronger position.
With the 34%, I think it's mostly theater from Xi. It's not like China would have wanted to buy much from US before anyways. The real action is in the addendum, the sanctions. Why sanction US though when US is effectively sanctioning itself for free already? Well because as the prediction expert Xi and his cabinet are, they already know US will grant exemptions.